


Concrescence

by winged-obsessor (canticle)



Series: Skysong [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: (shadow has a pottymouth), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Violence, Dragons, Gen, Magic, Mind the tag changes, Slow Build, Swearing, dragonbonding for fun and profit, dynamic tags, hope you're ready for the long haul, will update as the story does
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canticle/pseuds/winged-obsessor
Summary: Vio expected his life to change when he started high school, but he didn't expect it to change likethis.Dragons? Monsters? The ultimate evil residing at the edge of time?





	1. Vio, Summer, 14

**Author's Note:**

> concrescence- the coalescence or growing together of parts originally separate.

_Come to me._

There’s a voice calling him from somewhere.

He slits his eyes open the barest fraction; it’s been a long day, full of camping and hiking and fun, here at the tail end of their final 8th grade class trip. All he wants to do is sleep, now that Blue has rolled over and finally stopped snoring, and Red has stopped giggling. Green fell asleep in the first ten minutes, the lucky bastard. None of them are awake, though; none of them are the ones calling.

_Come to me._

He scrubs a hand across his eyes, jaw cracking in a long, aching yawn. Then he rises, not bothering to slip on his shoes, tugging his shorts up a little more firmly around his hips. In his sleepy mind is no question about who is calling, or why he goes. Someone is calling, so he must.

So he does.

The tent door zipper is silent; the campsite as a whole is silent. This particular camping area is remote enough that none of the teachers have set up a guard.  It’s child’s play for Vio to seal the tent back up and slip off toward the line of trees bordering the camp.

_Come to me._

The moon is bright, limning every leaf and every twig with silver-fire brilliance. The shadows that pool beneath the trees are equally dark. The air is cool on his skin, the forest loam damp beneath his feet. He walks as if in a dream, trailing fingertips across trunks covered with lichen, against mossy boulders tumbled haphazardly across the ground. All around him is the scent of dew, the scent of decay as his feet crunch along on top of decades of dead leaves.

_Come to me._

The forest is silent. There are no nightbirds seeking prey, nothing nocturnal hunting its way along the ground. Even the wind, soughing lazily through the boughs above, seems like it hesitates to make a noise.

The trees thin ahead of him; he walks towards the spaces between them as if pulled.

There’s a clearing. His feet meet cool, dewy grass instead of forest grit and he startles, staring down, staring around. He doesn’t recall how he got here. He doesn’t recall _why_ he came.

The clearing is large and wide, an oval long and flat enough to land a plane in. The edges look manicured, neat and tidy, none of the forest spilling in, none of the clearing spilling out. A perfectly contained area.

Something large and dark lurks at the far end.

_Come to me._

He takes a hesitant step forward, then another, before he stops. Finds his voice.

“This is a dream,” he says uneasily, looking down again at feet covered in the evidence of a long barefoot walk through the forest. “I am asleep.”

_::No::_

“N-no?” His voice cracks; he frowns. That…wasn’t his thought.

That wasn’t his voice.

That wasn’t _a_ voice.

His eyes are drawn again to the dark place at the far end of the oval, and a shiver runs through him, the hairs at the back of his neck and the backs of his arms lifting. He feels cold, colder than he should be on a mild summer night with the wind a bare whisper at his back.

_::Come to me, dragonchild::_

There’s a yank in his mind, as if someone’s put a fishhook between his eyes and tugged on the line. He tries to resist it, digs his heels in, wills himself to turn around, but he can’t.

Something draws him, one slow, shaking step after another, towards the far end.

The darkness looms as he gets closer. He squints, trying to make out details within—is it just shadowed? But by what? There is nothing overhanging it, no trees surrounding it. It is just…shadowed.

_::Foolish::_

Yes, it _was_ foolish to come out here in the middle of the night, wasn’t it? Vio contemplates hazily through an odd mental lassitude, following the fishhook tug in his mind, the steps coming easier now. Foolish, and now he’s going to pay for it.

Pay…for it?

Pay for _what?_

 _::Closer::_ the voice hisses, and Vio stumbles, nearly falls, catches himself. Something tells him it wouldn’t matter if he fell, anyway. He would just keep crawling. Keep crawling forward towards that awful nauseating darkness where something waits, something large, something with _teeth,_ something that rends and tears, something that views him as nothing more than a snack on the way to a bigger meal.

He’s a scant twenty yards from it when the fishhook releases with almost shocking suddenness, leaving him reeling, gasping for breath, shudders running through him. This is wrong, this is _wrong,_ he knows it, and yet he can’t escape, not now, not so close.

The darkness _moves._ It ripples, and it parts, and a beast slinks through, a beast Vio can barely comprehend, misshapen and oily, walking on too many legs and too few, oozing its way from the darkness that cradled it, kept it safe. It sighs, as if in anticipation, and its breath gusts over Vio, a hot meaty stench that makes him gag.

 _::Dragonchild,::_ it says, not in words but in _feelings,_ in sensations and images, in an oily slide over Vio’s mind that makes him want to double over and retch until everything in his stomach is gone. _::Foolish child. You should not have heeded my call. I have ruined ies plans, and all that you were to be shall be naught.::_

“W-what?” Vio stammers, taking a step back. The beast advances on him, slitting open its gaping mouth. Blackness drools out from between parted jaws, and where that blackness lands, the grass hisses and shrivels and dies. “I- I’m not a dragonchild—“

 _::Not now,::_ the beast says, and from it Vio gains a sense that it is undeniably _pleased_ with itself. _::Not now, not ever. Do not run.::_

Vio _runs._

Behind him the beast _laughs,_ a low horking rumble of sound, and the earth trembles as it takes off after him.

He’s only halfway to the treeline when he stumbles over the same thing he’d stumbled on the way in, and goes sprawling, flat on his face. He’s gasping for breath, scrabbling for purchase, trying to heave himself upwards, when the moonlight over him disappears.

He feels the hot, meaty stench of its breath against his back.

 _::Caught,::_ the beast purrs. _::Now die.::_

Vio screams.

A blast of air slams past him.

The beast _shrieks._

He flips himself over, trying to scrabble away again, and stops in pure shock.

The beast is halfway back across the field, staggering to its feet. Between it and Vio stands a shard of moonlight, the wind given form; a long sinuous silver streak that Vio barely has time to make sense of before it’s on the beast again, claws digging into its misshapen form like silver fire, burning away the darkness. Teeth like brilliant knives rend and tear, flinging ichor into the air like rain falling upwards, until the beast shrieks again.

Then it lets go, and watches with an air of dismissiveness as the beast, much diminished, flees back into its darkness, and the darkness wobbles and fades.

Then it turns to Vio, and Vio cringes before he can help himself.

But…there is something familiar about it.

It paces towards Vio, the ichor on its claws and muzzle streaming away into nothingness as it walks, until every inch of its scaly hide is pristine again. The moonlight glows along its spined back, along the long, gentle curve of its neck, along the well-muscled hindquarters and the endless length of bladed tail it carries along behind.

The moonlight glows along its wings.

It settles a fair ways away from Vio, lowering its head to rest on the ground, regarding Vio with one massive, slit-pupiled eye. _::Child,::_ it says, and where the beast’s voice was an oilslick along his mind, sinking into every crevice, making him want to gag, this voice is the gentlest breeze brushing over him, soothing, calming. _::Foolish child.::_

It takes Vio a moment to find the words, but when he can get them out, he says “Yes, I had gotten that.”

The silver beast—not a beast. The silver _dragon_ (and oh, what a dream, beasts and dragons and death, he would be glad to wake up in the morning) regards him almost fondly. _::This was my fault,::_ it says, in almost a sigh. The wind ruffles the grass in front of its muzzle a little more firmly than can be accounted for by its breath. _::I should not have been so close, and you have suffered for it. There should have been more time.::_

It sighs again, and Vio is struck with the powerful urge to move over, to lay his hand on the dainty muzzle and soothe the regret in that gentle voice. It’s strong enough that he does take two steps forward before the dark, silver-slit eye looks toward him and he freezes.  This is a creature that just mauled and destroyed something of equal stature, what was he _thinking?_

 _::I will not hurt you.::_ The voice is firm on that, and Vio gets a sense of—not quite truthfulness, not quite honesty, but something of both, and he suddenly somehow knows that this creature would never lie to him. Would never hunt him, stalk him like the dark monstrosity had. That this creature, for some reason, genuinely _likes_ him.

Which, wow.

He gives in to the urge then, shuffles forward until he’s beside that great head, that liquid, dark eye, and drops to his knees beside it. “You weren’t…hurt, during that fight, were you?” he asks, feeling stupid, but almost immediately a wave of affection washes over him. “Is that you? Doing that?”

 _::Yes. I was not hurt. A beast such as that would never be able to harm me,::_ the dragon says, tilting its head a little more towards Vio. If it opened its mouth, Vio would quite easily be able to stick his entire torso inside and take a look around.

Somehow, he gets the feeling he could do that if he wanted, and come out entirely unscathed.

There’s important questions to be asked, though.

Vio settles a little more firmly onto his heels and steels his nerves, reaching towards the great silver head with trembling fingertips. “Why did you save me?” he asks, quietly, as he meets smooth, cool scales, most no longer than his thumb, some as short as his first knuckle. The dragon pushes _contentment_ into his mind and he grows bolder, stroking along the eyeridge, up the great sweeping brow. “Why did it _call_ me?”

 _::Because you are meant for great things,::_ the dragon says, _::and because we have met before, you and I, and you are precious to me.::_

“I—we— _wait,_ you saved me before,” Vio realizes with a heady rush. “Back—I was in the lake, and you saved me from that thing that tried to _eat me,_ why does everything want to _eat_ me?”

 _::Because you are precious to me,::_ the dragon says again, and lifts its head from under Vio’s hand, curving it up to look down at him from above. _::Because you and I together could strike fear into the hearts of those who do wrong, and awe into the eyes of those who behold us. Because you are meant for me, as surely as I am meant for you.::_

Vio gapes upward, speechless, awed.

 _::You are meant for the dragonbond, little one,::_ says the dragon, infinitely patient, infinitely gentle, holding Vio’s gaze with those infinitely old eyes. _::That is what we share, in its nascence. That is what you feel between us. That is what draws me to you, and you to me. You have been meant for me since long before your sire’s sire was even a thought in the air. I would not have chosen to tell you this way. You are so young, and so fragile still. I would have waited. But that is in the wind, now, and you must make a choice.::_

“A choice?” Vio asks through a throat suddenly gone dry.

_::A choice. If you wish to accept the bond or not.::_

“But what does that _mean?_ What will it do, being bonded to you?”

 _::You will be stronger, faster. You will be able to use the magic of my kind. Your life will be…interesting. We will fight together, slay the monsters that threaten your people in the dark of the night, and you will have me for all of your days. Our joining could one day shake the foundations of the earth.::_ The bladed flat of the dragon’s tail comes up to gently nudge Vio’s knees; startled, he looks around, and sees that the dragon has wrapped the entire length around itself, making a circle. Vio and dragon.

“I can’t just keep calling you _dragon_ in my head,” he muses out loud, and the dragon laughs, a low huff with a rippling burst of amusement. “Do you have a name?”

 _::I do.::_ The dragon’s voice is deeply, endlessly amused. _::If you decide to take the bond, I shall tell you. Meet me in this place again when the sun has rounded the sky a handful of times. I will wait here for you.::_

“I—oh.” Vio frowns, thinking of ways he can make that happen. “I’ll ask my parents if we can come here camping again next weekend. That’s a little more than a handful of days, is that okay?”

 _::A sunround or two is nothing to one who has lived as long as I,::_ the dragon says, and Vio can feel that it smiles. _::For now, it is time for you to return. I will follow you, and ensure that nothing else crosses your path.::_

Vio nods, abruptly as sleepy again as he was when he first slit his eyes open. “I will come back,” he promises, laying his hand flat against the dragon’s neck. “I want to know more. I want to learn about you. About _this._ ”

 _::If you did not, you would not be my fated,::_ says the dragon with warm, deep amusement, and nudges him forward.

The walk back to his tent is even more surreal; the moon is lower, hanging in the sky like a bright round coin, and the shadows are different; less deep, softer perhaps, with an apex predator warm and wary at his back. The dragon stays under the cover of the trees when Vio makes it back to the campsite unscathed, and when he turns to wave goodbye it blinks at him, and he feels once again the low, warm rush of affection before it turns.

When he wakes up the next morning, he almost convinces himself it was a dream, before he sees the traces of dirt still on his feet. He manages to explain it away between yawns as a strong bathroom urge coupled with a sleepy paranoia of someone watching. Blue and Green tease him mercilessly about it, Red playing peacekeeper as always, until they’re all loaded back onto the buses and hauled back to the schoolyards to be picked up by their parents.

Vio spends the trip with his head pressed against the glass, shadows and silver beasts twining together in his mind’s eye.

 

His parents are surprised but eager when he asks to return to the campsite with them—he is of that age where children start pulling away from their parents, and has not shown all that much interest in the outdoors as he used to when he wanted to go to the lake all the time. His mother starts making plans immediately; his father just clasps a hand around his shoulder and shakes him a little, beaming downwards, before asking Vio what he wants for dinner.

They discuss the trip over hamburgers and fries at the local Gerudo diner; Vio answers absentmindedly (yes the campground was nice, there was a river to swim in right down the hill, the firepits were surprisingly spacious, the showers were not atrocious, of _course_ he washed behind his ears, Mother, does he look like he’s six?), his mind still on twining monsters and gale-swift justice. His parents notice his distraction, but pass it off as exhaustion (and indeed, he almost falls asleep over his chocolate milkshake, which his father kindly sends to be packaged for him).

The school year ends on a Tuesday; on Friday, his parents pack their cooler with lunch meat and hot dogs and marshmallows, pull the tents and sleeping bags out of storage, and load them all into the car. They’ll spend a whole weekend there; Vio will be able to make himself scarce exploring most of the day (and some of the evening, he’s sure; he has his own tent for a _reason_ ), which will be good.

For reasons.

Reasons he definitely won’t be explaining to his parents.

The campsite is definitely not as crowded as it was when his entire 8th grade class had been there; there are two other families, all spread out over the flattened area, each with their own firepit. Vio chooses a site as close to the forest as he can get.

They roast hot dogs and marshmallows; Dad puts a couple of roasted, charred marshmallows between a hot dog bun and tops them with shavings of chocolate, and Mom laughs and cringes away when he offers her a bite of it.

Vio takes a bite, to roaring laughter, and after swallowing the sticky mess declares it “not entirely terrible.”

“A success, then,” his father says with well-worn humor, and his mother wrinkles her nose at the both of them and declares them both tasteless.

Later, when the moon is a waning half-dollar hung high in the sky, the trail of Hylia’s necklace faded but present behind it, and his parents have retreated to their own tent, Vio slips out of his and back into the forest.

The way is easier this time; he’s wearing his shoes, for one thing. His feet beat along the well-trod forest floor as if they know exactly where they’re going, and he supposes they somewhat do. All week there’s been a _yearning_ inside him; not as present as the fishhook-tug had been, but there and definite, a mild but insatiable urge to head into the woods, waiting be damned.

He’d chewed his fair share of pencil erasers and pen caps to shreds trying to ignore it.

But now he can follow it to his heart’s content, and he does, half-jogging now, brushing aside stray branches and bits of bracken, until he can see the trees thinning ahead of him, moonlight spilling into that wide open clearing.

He breaches free of the wall of trees.

The dragon is there, waiting for him, as it promised.

His steps slow, some of his wildfire eagerness banking itself, transmuting into anticipation, into nerves burning low in his stomach, into something not much far away from low-grade terror. He knows that after this, something is going to change. Nothing will be the same.

It might be better to turn around, to accept that what happened was just some sort of odd dream.

It would be safer, for sure.

But... it’s looking at him, and he can _feel_ it welcoming him, not drawing him in with a tug, just transmitting _you are welcome here, you are anticipated._

_You are wanted._

The moonlight gleams no less dimly along its scales for being only half-full; it looks more ethereal, more insubstantial somehow, a comforting gleam instead of the knife-edged brilliance it had been.

 _::Dragonchild,::_ it calls him, and Vio can almost taste its satisfaction at the back of his tongue.

“Dragon,” he replies, and feels its warm amusement lapping at him, swelling and ebbing. “So…here I am.”

 _::So here you are,::_ it says, sitting on its haunches and dropping down further, until it rests on its elbows and lowers its head to meet Vio’s eyes. _::Come closer, little one. I promised I would not harm you.::_

“I believe you,” says Vio, a little breathless at the sight of those liquid dark eyes, and steps forward until he’s in the circle of the dragon’s body, its side rising high and steep above him. This close he can see how gauzy and diaphanous its wings look, like sheets of silk stretched between branches, the veins branching thin and needle-like throughout. It sees his interest and shrugs one half-open, and the moonlight gleams through it, turning the light beneath hazy, iridescent.

It tilts a forearm closer, offering him a place between its trunk-like legs, close to that dainty muzzle full of gleaming knives, and he takes it, leaning against the cool scales, looking up into those wise, ancient eyes. “Can you…tell me more about this?” he asks after a long, endless moment. “Why you? Why _me?_ What is the bond for?”

The dragon sighs, a gusty breath, and all around them the breeze picks up, setting the long grass waving like the sea in a storm. _::So young,::_ it says, though not ruefully. _::What do your people say about dragons nowadays? It has been a long time since I walked openly among man.::_

“We say they’re legends, mostly,” Vio says, “though clearly there is some truth to them.”

_::Clearly. Proceed.::_

“We say…they are wise, and fierce, and vicious,” he says slowly, “that their fire lights up the night sky, that their battles shake the earth. We say that they were the first-born of the goddesses, first-born and first-beloved. We also say that they aren’t much more than dumb animals,” he adds apologetically, and he feels the dragon laughing in short, sharp huffs. “Really, they don’t tell us much. It’s all in stories, like how in the legend of the Hero of Time, the Hero went into a live volcano and fought the dragon at the heart of it.”

 _::And what a fight it was,::_ the dragon says thoughtfully, _::a boy young enough not to know any better fighting a hatchling. I am surprised that he came out alive, though I was the one to explain to him how to succeed.::_

Vio blinks, staring up at the dragon, trying to digest that bit of information. “You…talked. To the Hero of Time,” he says, a little faintly.

 _::I trained the Hero of Time, yes,::_ says the dragon, just the faintest hint of amusement wafting off of it. _::I have trained many heroes, and watched many more.::_

“How _old_ are you?!”

 _::Older than many things on this world,::_ says the dragon, looking up at the moon. _::Perhaps there are some things far in Nayru’s depths that are older than I, though it would be close. I was there when the sky tore and evil slipped into this world for the first time. I was there for all the others, and I have done what I could to help. I promised I would.::_

“Promised who?”

The dragon pauses, then lays its head down, so its eye is level with Vio’s. _::The goddesses,::_ it says, its voice rich with age, with the gravitas of years past. _::I have done their will, as have we all. As do all the dragons, in return for their help in our time of need. But that is not a story for today,::_ it says abruptly, and blinks. _::Will you tell me your name, little one?::_

“I— _oh._ ” Vio shakes himself awake from the spell of the dragon’s words, a little embarrassed at how intently he’d been staring. “Vio. Short for Violet, but no one calls me that. Will you tell me yours, now?”

 _::Yes. I am_ **_Krikom víchrici cez horský priesmyk_ ** _.::_

Vio gets a wave of sensation from the words, as if they are simply a vehicle for a more sophisticated concept—the wind like a knife, ripping through the sky, an unstoppable, inexorable force. “Krikom… Krikom vichrici—“

 _::Priesm,::_ says the dragon, low and amused. _::You may use that. I am the screaming gale through the teeth of the mountain, the blade-edged zephyr at the flanks of my enemies--::_ and again Vio gets the rush of sensation, the wind in his face (on his? ies? scales), the air high and thin and clear as he? _ie—_ as ie glories in the joy of flight.

He sighs, deep and long, missing the ache of thin air in his lungs already though he’s never even known the taste. “So. Priesm. Why do you want me to bond with you? Why _me?_ ” he asks again, looking down at his hands. “I don’t think I’d be the best choice for this. Have you seen me? My dad says a strong wind could knock me over.” It’s almost true; at fourteen, he hasn’t hit a growth spurt yet aside from _up,_ and his gangly limbs and aching bones plague him during the nights.

 _::You are the only one who can,::_ Priesm says gently, ies eyes falling half shut as Vio’s fingers stroke at the smooth scales at ies jaw. _::The dragonbond is for one and one only; one can go lifetimes without meeting ones bonded, or one can find them and have them refuse. The dragonbond is sacred; with it you gain the use of magic, and with it we gain eternal partnership, and with it the world gains an essential piece in the fight against_ **_ten ktorý čaká na okraji času,_ ** _the one who waits at the edge of time. He is the root of all evil; he is the general and genitor of every disaster that has rocked this world.::_

“The Demon King?” Vio asks, breathless. “The one from the legends? But—isn’t he just a story, like the bogeyman in the closet?”

_::Everything is just a story, hatchling. The world began when the goddesses told themselves a story. Ten ktorý čaká, He Who Waits, is as real as you and I, for all that he is locked away from this world. Everyone fights in their own way, whether they know it or not, but the Bonded are the vanguards of the fight. We uphold the ancient battle until all is dust and ash, until all who call this world their own have abandoned it, lest in the waiting He Who Waits finds the key to throwing the world into destruction once more.::_

“But—I’m not a hero. I’m not—I wasn’t _made_ for this—“

 _::The boy you call the Hero of Time was four years younger than you when he was thrust upon his journey,::_ Priesm tells him, not ungently. _::He was not a hero then, nor did he consider himself a hero throughout all his journeys. He did what he did because he felt it was the right thing to do, as did they all. As shall you. And if you feel that the right thing to do is to turn away—::_

Though there is no recrimination in that ageless voice Vio immediately makes a negative noise, stiffening where he leans against Priesm’s silvery forelimb. “No,” he says again, pushing himself upright and walking to stand in front of Priesm’s head. Ie follows him with ies eyes, but doesn’t move. “I…if this is…” He stops, fisting his hands in his hair, starting to pace. “This is so much. All of this. I’m not even a freshman in high school yet, and you want me to help you save the world.”

 _::Yes,::_ says Priesm, and ies voice is infinitely gentle.

Vio blows out a long, long puff of air and let his arms fall down to his sides.

There it was.

He could walk away now, and always wonder, and always regret, and always wonder if he was safe…

Or he could take up the Dragonbond. Take up the mantle of a fighter, however ridiculous it sounded when he thought it.

He sighs again, turning towards Priesm.

Really, there was no choice.

He takes two steps forward until he stands again in front of Priesm, letting out another breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “So,” he says, and takes the smallest shred of pride when his voice only wobbles a little bit. “How do we bond?”

Priesm huffs out a small breath; Vio feels the amusement, the affection rolling off of iem in waves. _::Place your hand onto my muzzle,::_ ie says. _::Reach out to me. I will reach back.::_

“How?” Vio asks, but his hand is already raised, shaking, and Priesm simply nudges ies muzzle under it. Vio flattens his hand across the cool scales, feels Priesm’s breath blowing past him, and thinks about the affection he’d felt, the amusement, the cool humor, the ferocity with which Priesm fought; he thinks about the wind in the grass and the liquid dark eyes with their silver-slit pupils.

He thinks about the wind, howling through the teeth of the mountain, and feels the selfsame wind blow through his hair.

There is a hush, as if every living thing in radius has held its breath, leaning in to listen.

A pause, seemingly endless.

Then what feels like a void opens in the forefront of Vio’s mind, endless and hungry and _aching,_ and he quails, cringes away from it, catches himself and forces himself to stand strong and stalwart in front of it—

_A starburst of memories not his own, the taste of hot blood and warm meat between his jaws, at the back of his tongue, the ache of wounds gained and given and friends loved and lost, the fierce joy of cavorting in the air with his ?????, a thousand thousand enemies fought and slain, a hundred schemes of He Who Waits fought and foiled, and the bright brilliance of a smiling goddess’s touch upon his brow—_

Something settles warm and heavy in the back of his head, and Vio rocks backwards as if struck, overwhelmed, staggering, gasping for breath. “Is that--it?”

 _::Yes,::_ Priesm croons, a low thrum in ies throat, and curls more tightly around Vio, who leans against ies side, shaking like a leaf in a late-fall storm. _::This is how we begin, you and I.::_

“Yes,” Vio agrees, helpless, tears dripping down his face, and buries deeper into the gleaming silver scales.

This is how they begin.


	2. Vio, Summer/Fall, 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Got my head in the clouds and I can't come down_

The summer he spends with his bondmate feels like a dream, then and ever after.

His parents deem him old enough to entertain himself without a babysitter or the need for scheduled summer activities and leave him to himself for the vast majority of it; he spends his days from sunup to sundown in the woods, in the company of the stuff of fables.

Priesm spends weeks teaching him about the plants and animals in the forest, about which ones are safe for more-fragile people like himself to eat, how to tell good from bad (though he probably would never have to, having his bondmate a warm, thrumming sensation in the back of his mind). He can always ask Priesm if he doesn’t know, but his dragon insists that he have the background anyway, in case iemself is unavailable.

Ie takes Vio on a long, heart-pounding gallop through the wooded foothills at the edge of the city, teaching Vio how to grip with his legs, how to balance on ies slick scales, wedged securely between two of ies spines close to where ies neck joins the rest of ies body right before ies wings. There is a hollow there that would be more ideal for sitting, but when Vio first tried, he slid free the second Priesm took three quick steps. _::Too small as of yet,::_ Priesm had said with that quiet ancient humor, and Vio had laughed a little himself from where he lay, sprawled and a little disoriented, in the dirt.

With only minimal guilt, he asks his mother one busy Friday afternoon if he can spend the weekend at a friend’s house; she’s so frazzled that she says yes immediately with no further questions asked, kisses his cheek, and rushes back out the door to do whatever unfathomable adult thing she has to do.

He gathers things that Priesm tells him to—a  water jug and his sleeping bag, his hiking boots, a warm sweater, a pocket knife that his father gave him years ago that he’s never had occasion to use—ties them into as neat a bundle as he can manage, and tosses them out the window. Priesm catches them very delicately between ies razor-sharp teeth; ie sets the bundle on the ground with a huff and says _::Do not forget the rope.::_

Vio _has_ forgotten the rope. “Um,” he says, casting around in the bottom of his parent’s closet. “I don’t actually know if we have any. Would bungee cords work?”

 _::I do not know these ‘bungee cords’,::_ Priesm admits, and Vio bites his lip and concentrates fiercely on sending a mental image of how they can be used, long and stretchy enough to apply tension, the hooks on the ends making shortening and lengthening no problem at all. _::Ah. Perhaps, if you have enough.::_

“They won’t crush your scales?” Vio asks, feeling absurdly protective for a moment, and Priesm laughs, a few low, soft huffs.

_::No, hatchling. I will not feel their pressure. I barely feel yours, and that is what they will be there to assist with. Enough for the binding, and enough to bind yourself, until we can come up with a more suitable substitute.::_

When Priesm had been wondering over the logistics of keeping a half-grown Vio steady in his seat, Vio had tentatively suggested a saddle. Priesm had fixed him with such a _look_ that he’d never brought it up again.

He eventually does find them, and does have enough, and rigs a rough harness around Priesm’s neck and chest that Priesm deems _::acceptable, if not ideal::_ and tucks his belongings under it securely. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going or what we’ll be doing,” he says, scaling Priesm’s offered foreleg to swing himself into his seat.

 _::It is time you begin to learn magic,::_ says Priesm, and takes off, cantering on near-silent paws through the forest. The wind surrounds them, bending branches out of ies way and letting them snap back into place once they’ve passed. _::Head down, remember.::_

“Yes,” Vio says, and tucks himself closer to the gleaming neck, legs wedged under bungee cords hooked so tightly they’re cutting off circulation to his legs. He doesn’t complain, though.

Priesm takes them out farther than Vio has ever been before, out past the foothills and into the mountains proper, not far from the jagged rise of Snowpeak and the ancient, dormant caldera of Death Mountain. The slopes are covered in patchy verdigris, clumps of evergreen and goddesswood rising almost up to the snowline, broken by rocky patches and wide, verdant clearings where the river Hylia, birthed from Snowpeak’s frozen mount, wends its way down the mountainside on the way to the Lake, and then to the sea.

It is to one of these clearings that Priesm takes him, wide enough for the dragon iemself to settle comfortably in the center, small enough that any threat coming from the trees surrounding them can be dispatched immediately. An offspring of the river burbles cheerfully through it, no more than a couple of yards across. The water is clear and icy, cold enough to make his teeth hurt even in the height of summer, and Vio takes a moment to splash some over his hands and face.

Priesm politely waits till he’s done, then dips ies muzzle into the stream as well, taking a few sips. The late afternoon sunlight makes the drops of water on ies muzzle gleam when ie raises ies head. _::This will do as nicely as any,::_ ie says, tilting ies head to look down at Vio through one of those dark, liquid eyes. _::Are you ready to begin?::_

“As ready as I can be, I suppose,” Vio says, somewhat dubiously. Out of all the things to be conflicted about, between dragons and monsters, he admits it’s a bit silly to doubt his own ability to reach into Priesm’s magic and take it for himself, but…

 _::As I have told you, then,::_ Priesm says. _::Reach for the bond inside of you. Feel where you are tied to me. That in itself is the bridge that will allow you to utilize the magic.::_

Vio does.

It’s still a marvelous feeling, sensing the bond; something extraordinary, something that takes his breath away and fills him with awe that _he_ is the one meant for this glorious creature, moonlight spun into scales, the breath of the wind given form. Priesm is _there_ just as much as ie is outside, and Vio feels the warm, ancient humor and follows it down.

He can feel…something. Something he doesn’t really know how to explain, but that’s okay, because he is young and has no experience as of yet. Priesm will show him.

 _::Breathe,::_ says Priesm, and Vio inhales.

And in the inhaling, there is a spark of recognition.

 _::Movement,::_ says Priesm, and there’s a sort of _ping_ from the bond, something that Vio grasps with his mind and holds fast. _::At its base, that is the bones and blood of our magic. When you are fully realized, you will be able to pluck a single evergreen needle from the forest floor and guide it to your hand from miles away, without disturbing anything around it. You will call down the wrath of the sky, or still it. But for the nonce, simply feel the movement. Breathe it in. Breathe it out. Hold it within and without yourself.::_

Vio does.

It’s as if with each breath he feels _more_ ; the sun on his skin, the breeze sending goosebumps shivering up his spine. He exhales and the breath feels heavier than it should, weighty, cold; he feels it sink down, brushing against his chest, his hands. He feels the sway of the grass around him, the chilly turbulence of the wind above the stream, the trembling of the leaves above and around him.

He breathes, and he feels the world breathe with him.

 _::Now,::_ says Priesm, and there is something odd in ies voice, something that Vio can’t quite recognize, too busy holding onto the fragile sense of everything around him, _::pull it back, in and around yourself. Wrap the wind around you like armor, like a well-worn piece of clothing. Do not let it slip.::_

Vio frowns at that. “How—“ he starts to ask, but Priesm shows him, and it’s simple, so simple to tug the movement from the leaves and the stream and the grass and wrap it around himself like a blanket, warm and snug.

_::Open your eyes.::_

He does.

There’s a maelstrom around him, barely an arm’s length away, thick enough he can barely see Priesm through it. Dust and dirt, dead leaves and dead grass, evergreen needles and even tiny pebbles; it’s like what he imagines standing in the eye of a tornado must feel like.

It fills him with awe. _He_ did this. He reaches a hand out, lets the tip of his index finger trail along the inner wall of the windstorm. He can _feel_ where it stops, feel the bridge between motion and stillness.

_::Do not let it fall.::_

That is the only warning he gets before a rock the size of a softball comes hurtling from the stream and slams into the wall of his personal windstorm.

He yelps at the disruption, at the shock that runs through him as the rock skids along the barrier and falls away somewhere to the side. “Priesm, what—“

 _::Do not let it fall,_ :: Priesm repeats. The odd note in ies mental voice is back, stronger now, as two more rocks come rushing at him. One makes it through, whizzing past Vio’s head at a speed that makes him shudder. _::This is your second lesson, hatchling. You will defend, or you will fall. There are no other options.::_

And the rocks fly forward.

When the sun is low enough that the sky is dark but for a long strip of blood-red and orange to the west Priesm finally thumps ies tail on the ground, and the last of Vio’s makeshift shield dissipates, slipping away from his numbed, exhausted grasp. He takes a step or two forward before his knees give out, sending him roughly to the ground. He had done his best, but that hadn’t been enough; Priesm had managed to send far too many rocks through his shield for his liking, and his body is covered in bruises.

“Did you teach _all_ your mentees like this?” he asks, voice cracking. His throat is dry, he realizes; he hasn’t had a drink for hours, and the wind around him sucked most of the moisture out of the air. His legs are still too limp to get up; with a sigh, he starts rolling himself the last few feet towards the stream.

 _::They had to come into their magic on their own, hatchling.::_ Priesm huffs and stretches ies neck out, lifting Vio by the back of his shirt the few feet necessary. _::You have done well for your first time. Many Bonded are not able to deflect even a single rock this early.::_

Vio drinks thirstily, the cold water helping to shock him back into himself, letting his hands stop shaking and giving him enough strength to push himself to his feet. “So, are we done?”

 _::For now,::_ Priesm says with something approaching humor. _::You may rest; when the moon rises high, though, you hunt for your dinner.::_

“Great,” Vio groans, and presses his hands into the heels of his eyes. “I am so excited.”

 _::As you should be.::_ Priesm laughs, and it’s not a nice, fun laugh.

Vio can tell that whatever happens, he is probably not going to enjoy it.

  


It’s an unpleasant shock when Vio wakes up one morning in mid-August and realizes that the summer is almost over.

He’s been out in the woods with Priesm for nearly a week straight at this point- Priesm had shown him how to create a simulacra that would pass basic human detection; especially since Vio himself has the tendency to sleep far past noon and fetch most of his own food in the summer. His parents never really expect to see him; they all keep up via text, and when Vio rolls over to check his phone (at ass-o-clock in the morning, Priesm believes that early to rise is the best) he sees a wink emoji from his mother and a reminder to be awake around two, because they’ll be going—

“Clothes shopping,” Vio groans, and pulls himself out of his sleeping bag groggily. _“Crap._ ”

Priesm lifts ies head from where ie’s curled protectively around Vio, and Vio can feel ies wordless inquiry. “I need to be home by noon,” he says, yawning. “My mom wants to take me out. It’s not something the simulacra could handle, either; she wants to buy me new clothes for my first year of high school.”

Which is something that awes him a little, when he steps back to think about it. Not three months ago he was stressing about moving up to a new school, about losing his friends and growing up and not having any time for fun things anymore—and look at him now, scratched and battered and dusty, running around the woods with a _dragon,_ for Din’s sake.

Some things really put his priorities straight.

He ties his sleeping bag back into its bundle while Priesm rises to ies feet, shaking iemself out with a grumble and stretching ies stiffness away. They spent the night on a rocky outcropping about half a day’s flight from the desert, and the nights are chill this far west.

It had taken them three days to get out this far in the first place. Vio has no clue how they’re going to get back in time.

Priesm catches that thought and rumbles a chuckle; Vio can sense a bit of mischief in the air. _::You will see why the Wind flight is reknown, hatchling,::_ ie says, settling down so Vio can vault from proffered forearm to neck in a practiced, easy gesture.

In the past month they’ve experimented with several ways to fasten Vio down, and the best they’ve come up with is a makeshift body harness made of bungee cords and leather strips that Priesm had brought him from somewhere (he hadn’t asked and Priesm hadn’t offered), wrapping around shoulders and torso down to his thighs, with three primary hitching points—chest, belt, back, with secondaries at both thighs. They all connect to a rope-and-leather web that wraps around Priesm’s lower neck; this way, Vio can hook his legs around the shoulder joints of Priesm’s wings to both anchor himself and keep them out of the way, and his upper body is still free to move around as it needs.

Priesm says that this will be very valuable when Vio is skilled enough to fight from his back. Vio, personally, has his doubts but doesn’t want to argue.

He’s been doing a lot of fighting lately.

Once Priesm had been satisfied with Vio’s first application of defensive magic, training had gone quickly; from the generalized maelstrom Vio had learned how to summon a shield of whirling force, learned how to bind it to his arm and how to control its size with a thought (and how to keep it up once it had been hit, which had been a fair problem at first.) From there he had learned how to boost his steps, how to run faster (now that he never became out of breath) and jump farther, using the wind to propel him farther and faster and higher than he ever could have gone on his own.

It was exhilarating, and Priesm made sure he had plenty of opportunities to practice. One of ies favorite exercises was landing with Vio’s lunch on top of an otherwise impassible crag or ravine and waiting for Vio to reach him. It was something Vio participated in enthusiastically; knowing that he knew how to catch himself from either side if he wobbled made him fairly confident in leaping and bounding from unsteady ledge to unstable boulder, always up and onwards.

One memorable day, as Priesm landed across a wide chasm, clearly expecting Vio to make his way down and then back up the other side, Vio had drawn on all his strength and sprinted, using his magic to launch him bounding across the gap as if it was nothing but a sidewalk crack. He had, perhaps, overshot himself; Priesm had had to awkwardly take flight and catch him when he blasted a good 200 feet in the air and came tumbling down, yelling the entire time.

He had more control, now; Priesm had praised him for how fast his control had surfaced, how tight his defenses were becoming. Vio thought he might even be able to deflect a bullet at this point.

There was the simulacra, of course, mostly made of his breath and blood captured in a windstorm vessel, programmed to give certain responses and also a link to his bedroom when he needed it.

And then there was the dagger at his right hip and the short sword resting on his back.

Dragonriding was not conducive to carrying a sword in a proper configuration at his hip; when Priesm had brought him to where the utilitarian blade was waiting Vio had just blinked at iem. How and why he needed to learn sword practice was beyond him. But Priesm had insisted, had turned out to be a surprisingly good teacher, and soon Vio was drilling with his open blade for three or four hours a day.

He hasn’t killed anything with either weapon yet. But he’s skinned a rabbit or three with the dagger, grimacing the entire time. Priesm was _very_ big on the whole “learning how to survive off the land” theme, and two months into their bonding Vio’s fairly sure he could survive an entire summer in the woods.

Winter would be different, but in the winter he’d have a dragon hunting at his side.

The sword rattles a little on his back when he mounts, clipping himself into each carabiner almost mechanically. They’ve done this so often by now that he could do this in his sleep. _::Check that they are secure,::_ Priesm tells him, and he does, yanking on each strap in turn. _::Good. Now form a thin shield over your face. Your eyes are delicate.::_

That is a very ominous sentence, and Vio obeys without question. It’s second nature to wrap the wind around his face, a flexible, breathable screen that’ll keep pressure from him. He’s used it before when Priesm brought him high, high up, high enough that the air thinned drastically and he could see the curvature of the earth beneath them.

Once he’s secure, Priesm delicately steps towards the end of the craggy outcropping, shaking outies wings again. Vio loves to see them unfold, the beautifully iridescent membrane between them catching the early dawn light. _::Hold tight,::_ ie says with a hint of humor, and tilts forwards towards the scrubland below.

The air is still thick and heavy; ie flaps ies wings in long, leisurely motions, spiraling up towards the thin clouds above, and when they’re at their usual cruising altitude ie parts ies jaws and _inhales._ Vio can feel ies sides expand, ies great chest heaving beneath him, and then—

Ie does something Vio feels through the bond but can’t quite understand, and ie _flaps_ , and there’s a _boom,_ and suddenly they’re moving at a pace faster than anything Vio has ever felt before.

It’s madness. His clothes are strangling him. He frantically extends his windshield down to his throat, sucking in a breath of relief, but everything else is tight against him, his hair blowing back furiously. He would be genuinely afraid for his life if he wasn’t wearing the safety harness; he thanks every star in the sky that Priesm had made him construct it.

It’s endless. He can’t tell how fast or how far they’re going, Priesm arrowing through the air like some sort of ballistic missile; he dips just far enough into Priesm’s mind to feel ies joy, ies pleasure in flight, feel ies tail snapping behind them, making minute corrections in their airstream, the air streaming through ies teeth and past ies muzzle and flowing wild and free all around them.

Vio doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so alive in his life.

Priesm finally huffs _out_ and tilts his wing down; there’s a noticeable drop in their speed, and soon Vio feels comfortable enough to peek downward and see where they are.

It’s his house, surprisingly enough. Priesm’s never decided to land this close; there are a _lot_ of trees in the way, and it takes some precision flying. Vio doesn’t doubt that Priesm _can_ land in his backyard, of course, as Priesm is a master of precision flying, but there’s something about that tiny patch of green rushing up to meet them—

“Wait,” he says, realization hitting him like a glass of cold water to the face, “aren’t you worried about people seeing you?”

 _::There is no one around to see but the dumb beasts,::_ Priesm says, gentle and reassuring, and touches down with ies back legs.

The gusts of wind from ies backpedaling blow over their plastic lawn chairs, but that’ll be easy enough to right later. Vio pulls his phone from the pocket of his cargo shorts and checks—12:07 pm. _“Wow,”_ he says, awed. “You—how did you—“

 _::There are many secrets I have left to share with you, beloved,::_ Priesm says, ies tone warm. _::It is time to bathe and groom yourself before your dam returns.::_

Vio makes a disgruntled noise and goes.

He strips down to his boxers in the bathroom, bundling all his clothes together and dumping them in the washer first thing; it wouldn’t do to have his mother ask questions about why they’re so dirty. He dismisses the simulacra, letting the wind rush out the window; he’ll call it back when he needs it.

When he pads back into the bathroom, though, the view in the mirror gives him pause.

He’s filthy, but he expected that; there’s mud smeared across one cheek and dust all over his face and arms. He’s got a bruise the size of an apple on his left shoulder from a fall he couldn’t prevent. He’s fiercely tanned below the elbows, but almost winter-pale above; training with Priesm hasn’t left much time for sunbathing.

Despite the dirt and the grime, his muscles stand out under his skin with a starkness that startles him. He raises one arm and flexes, watches his bicep shift and swell, runs his hand over it a bit disbelievingly. He looks like he could rival _Blue,_ and Blue’s been training for high school football since _fifth grade._

He doesn’t quite have a six-pack, but his baby fat is completely gone, leaving unfamiliar hard, lean lines of cheek and jaw, of rib and leg. His calves look _ridiculous._

Vio is at once pleased and distressed.

_How is he going to hide this from his mother?!_

He puzzles over it as he showers, delighting in the warm water, in the way the grime swirls down the drain; he scrubs himself twice over before he feels truly clean, and has to spend about ten minutes with his mother’s nail brush before he can get all the dirt out of the new-formed callouses on his palms. It would be nice to have scales like Priesm, to easily sluice off all the blood and dust and dirt with a simple wallow in a stream, but long, hot showers are a close second.

When he comes out and towels off, red as a cooked lobster, he gets a second unpleasant surprise.

Spending all that time flying up near the stratosphere has bleached his normally yellow-gold hair to something more approaching platinum.

This is a more serious problem, one he’s not sure he can pass off as simply being outdoors a lot; his mother knows him too well for that, knows he prefers to linger inside until two or three, reading and lounging in shadier areas.

The solution he comes up with is simple, if inelegant; he’ll borrow one of his dad’s work shirts and say it’s because he’s outgrown all his nicer clothing, and jam one of his rarely-used beanies on top of his head. If she asks, he’ll say he bleached it in an ill-advised dye attempt with Green, and accept the chastising.

But his mother barely even notices, just makes a wistful comment about how fast he’s growing and hugs him tight before she chivvies him out to the car.

When he shops, he usually picks clothes for comfort, clothes that please his eye; graphic t-shirts and loose jeans, cargo shorts and chunky sneakers, things like that. This time, he picks for concealment.

His mother takes it as just wanting a more mature wardrobe for his freshman year of high school, and praises most of his choices, from the sweater-vests calculated to hide how bulky his shoulders are starting to get, to the slacks and jeans that give him a better range of movement (he practices jumping in the dressing room when his mother wanders off, and both will probably give him enough leeway to hop up onto Priesm’s forearm); the loose, baggy hoodie could probably conceal his short sword if he sat straight enough.

The combat boots and Converse are just because he likes them, and because they’ll both likely come in handy.

His mom insists on going all out with school supplies; he picks up a new backpack, a new water bottle, numerous folders and binders and pens and pencils, a graphing calculator, a whole mess of things that leaves his head spinning. It’s hard to adjust to the fact that he’s going back to spending his days sitting in a classroom instead of in the air or out in the forest.

And before he knows it, he’s there.

His mom kisses him on the forehead that morning and hands him a bagged lunch; she won’t do it every day, she’s far too busy for that, but this day of all days is special. He barely talked her out of taking a commemorative photo.

Priesm sits warm and heavy at the back of his mind, helping stave off his exhaustion; he’d snuck out the window last night for one last carefree night of flying, and had fallen asleep on Priesm’s neck. He’s still stiff and sore, honestly, itching to move instead of sitting on the bus amidst the chatter of sixty other excited children.

The noise is starting to give him a headache, and he knows it’s only going to get worse.

And it does, it really does, when Red tackles him from behind in the hallway and he nearly elbows him in the face. He’s shouting something in Vio’s ear over the mess and the rush, something it takes him far too long to parse; when Vio turns, he doesn’t look any different, even for having been away the whole summer. Maybe a little more tan, a little less chubby-cheeked, a little taller, nothing overly noticeable.

He’s beaming, and asking why Vio’s been no-contact the entire summer, and suddenly Vio has no clue what to say to him.

How can he explain what he’s been doing? He doesn’t have a lie prepared, has never had to lie to the face in front of him before, doesn’t know how.

So he doesn’t. He stammers an excuse, and he runs away to his next class.

Somehow he manages to dodge Red for the entirety of the day; somehow he never sees either Blue or Green either, and escapes onto the bus with a sense of desperation.

But the bus is too slow, too loud and noisy and smelly, there are too many yelling children and the air is stagnant and he feels so _confined,_ and when he steps off the bus there’s next to no choice about what he has to do.

He drops his bag in the kitchen and flees into the forest, where Priesm is waiting for him, and they fly.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” Vio groans, hugging tight to Priesm’s neck as ie banks over the lake, carving a swath through the gentle air currents. “I don’t understand how it’s all changed so quickly.”

 _::You are different because I am with you,::_ Priesm tells him. _::You are more sensitive to your surroundings. I am remiss; I will teach you how to shield yourself from the unwanted emotions.::_

“Wait. You mean I’m feeling them like I feel you? In my head?”

_::Yes.::_

“Am I reading their minds?”

Priesm huffs. _::No, bonded. That is for none save the Lightbonded, and only in the direst of circumstances. A mind is sovereign to itself; your mind is yours and mine alone, as mine is mine and yours. What you are feeling is emotions bleeding into the air, making it turbulent. I will teach you how to wrap stillness around your mind as you have learned to wrap it around your body.::_

“I’d like that,” Vio says, relieved. He doesn’t want to feel the panicky, jittery chaos he’d felt today forever.

 _::We will begin at week’s end, though I will require you to hold it during your hours of schooling as well. It will be difficult, though well within your capabilities. For the nonce I will shield for you. I should have yesterday; I was remiss in that. You are remarkably sensitive.::_ The last is accompanied with a wash of pride, warm and comforting through him, washing away the dregs of the headache still pounding at his temples, and Vio sighs happily and squeezes Priesm tighter.

 _::I know you will. Now hold tight.::_ That’s the only warning he gets before Priesm pulls ies wing in and turns ies leisurely glide into a breathtaking spiral, and Vio _whoops_.

He adjusts, if slowly.

Red keeps trying to corner him; he sees Blue from a distance once, and waves at Green when Green waves back, but none of them share his lunch period, and so he doesn’t have to explain his summer at all. The subjects that he has to take are boring, the classes packed with laconic children doing no more than the bare minimum, still longing for the summer. Even his electives that he’d been so excited to choose are less interesting than he’d thought or hoped they would be.

They’re still better than pre-AP Trigonometry, though.

Before he realizes it, it’s October, then November; school passes by in a haze of information that sticks to his brain or slides off uselessly. Somehow he’s still at the top of his classes. Priesm hasn’t pushed him to start shielding, feeling Vio’s stress and frustration with the mundane; ie rests in the back of Vio’s mind always now, a warm and comforting presence, occasionally interested in what his teachers are saying.

Especially in his history classes.

 _::That is incorrect,::_ ie interjects after Vio’s teacher mentions something about the Suppression War. _::The ‘hero’ was not trained from birth to fight the Usurper; he was a child, raised among a race of childhood unending and forced to grow up far too fast.::_

“Really?” Vio says out loud, startled, and the teacher pierces him with a look. “Um, I mean, that sounds like it was very well thought out,” he recovers, and the teacher nods, mollified.

 _::It was not,::_ Priesm says, huffing a sigh into Vio’s mind. _::But one cannot plan out the events of destiny. One can only do with them what one must.::_

It’s a thought that sticks with him for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, if you enjoyed this, or didn't enjoy it, or are incredibly confused, or even just hungry, i'd love to hear about it! please leave me a comment!
> 
> summary lyrics- _can you feel it_ \- sublime with rome


	3. Vio, Winter, 14

He hates not having enough time to visit Priesm as thoroughly as he wants.

His weekends aren’t his own anymore; between homework and “family time” his only options are to sneak out early in the morning or after he’s supposed to have gone to bed. It’s not like he can do homework a-dragonback, either; Priesm is too narrow at the withers to balance more than himself on.

His hands ache for the white-knuckled grip on his flying harness, for the feel of his dagger, for the thin, high air crisp and aching in his sinuses. He snaps pencils and pens when he gets too careless; his backpack is filled with broken shards of wood and frustration.

It stays like this until December, and studying for finals. He’s trying to do his homework when Priesm taps at his mind and says _::We must discuss.::_

“Must we?” Vio not-quite-groans. “I have so much homework.”

Priesm is firm, though, and Vio sees ies snout pass by one window. _::I wish to introduce you at the next quarter-Council.::_

Vio blinks at that; he’s never heard Priesm speak so gravely. “Quarter-council?” he says, sounding the words out of the feeling that Priesm sends his way. “A meeting?”

 _::At the full of the moon,::_ Priesm agrees. _::There will not be overly many others there; quarter-councils are for the Light flight to gossip with whoever will spare them the time. It is for socialization, for a race of creatures who have a long history of not socializing.::_

“Great,” Vio mutters under his breath, and scratches out another set of equations. “Dragons.”

 _::Yes,::_ says Priesm with quiet humor. _::Dragons.::_

The anticipation sticks with him through the next three days of school, Priesm always in the back of his mind at every spare moment, urging him to keep his shields up; the constant pressure is beginning to give him a headache. Priesm assures him that this is normal; once he becomes used to carrying the shield, he will barely notice it, and it will be instinctive to raise or lower as easily as blinking his eyes.

Frankly, Vio can’t wait for that day to come soon enough. His head is heavy enough by lunchtime that he can barely bear the press of the lunchroom, so many people talking at once, their voices bouncing off the walls and colliding in midair, fragmenting and reforming until there are so many fragments Vio thinks he might go mad.

He abandons the lunch room gratefully and makes his way outside; it’s a little chilly out today, the skies gray and overcast, but it suits him just fine, especially when Priesm reminds him to raise a layer of air just above his skin, trapping the warmth from his body more effectively than any clothing.

He can’t finish his rubbery ham-and-cheese on spongy white bread. After the faire of the forest, after half-charred rabbits roasted hot and savory over a fire, it is so bland. He thinks longingly back to the summer, up before dawn and going far after dusk, sleeping curled in the hollow of Priesm’s spine where ies wings met ies back.

 _“This weekend?”_ he asks Priesm silently, trying to ignore the pleading tone that seeps in, and sighs when Priesm’s reassurance wraps around him, warmer than any air-cushion could ever be.

He greets the weekend with relief and excitement, more so than he’s ever done before. He told his parents last night that he had plans all weekend, that he’d be locked in his room getting a head-start on his projects, and he’s never lied to them before; of course they would believe him now.

It’s easy to clamber out his window and onto Priesm’s head, easy to ladder hand-over-hand down ies neck and settle himself down, wrapping the next-generation makeshift harness straps around his legs and tucking his arms in as well. “I’m secure.”

Priesm turns daintily and hop-steps over his backyard fence without disturbing a single board, and then they’re off. They make their usual way through the forest, Priesm cantering ies long, low lope while Vio practices bending branches back before them. He’s not always successful; Priesm catches the ones he misses with a mental chuckle, and some of them break behind him into messy splinters, but he can feel his finesse sharpening and knows that someday he’d be able to hold back every branch for miles before them if he wanted to.

Priesm tucks his head down and gallops the last eighth of a mile, ies wings trembling; when ie reaches their usual take-off clearing ie takes two great leaps and then launches iemself upwards, wings scooping the air and shoving it down, and Vio delights in the feeling of freedom, in that long dizzying spiral upwards until they level out and he’s panting for breath.

The air is turbulent, and Priesm bids him to check his straps; when Vio assures iem that they’re secure, Priesm…sports.

It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before; Priesm hops from one windstream to the next, tumbling about in the high-level wind currents, letting them buffet iem back and forth, and Vio feels them all, feels the way Priesm snakes through them, feels the stress of the past months fall away from him like a shed skin, leaving him light and breathless and _free_ again.

It’s nearly ten minutes before he looks over and sees another dragon riding the same winds, and realizes in the same heartbeat that they’re approaching the wide swath of the mountains.

Another, there, below—in the moonlight it’s hard to tell color, but he thinks he’s glimpsing shades of red when the dragon is knocked out of its windstream by a brilliantly blue flash; they tumble out of sight faster than he can see, and he swallows deeply.

The winds calm as they get nearer to the mountains, and Vio sees all around him the handful of dragons ascending or descending, coming on a level path; as a group, they sweep over the teeth of the first ridge and down into the valleys below, approaching the bulk of Death Mountain’s hollow caldera. Nobody’s been up here in an age, except to marvel at the wide, rough terracing inside the hollow.

Tonight, Vio finds out what it’s been used for.

Dragon after dragon swoops down to settle on terrace after terrace; most are alone, though some hop up or down a level or three to approach another. There are dragons of all shapes and sizes, and Vio jolts when he realizes that Priesm is _tiny_ compared to them.

Priesm laughs at that thought. _::I am smaller than they, yes,::_ ie says, almost reassuring, _::but none of them could so much as catch me if they tried.::_ Ie lands with pinpoint precision on an outcropping above the rest of the caldera; from there ie and Vio can watch as more dragons land, some calling greeting cries, others silently, until both the air outside and the space inside his head ring with conversation.

A massive dragon nearly twice the size of Priesm and pale, pearly and opalescent hops its way up the terraces to sit politely beneath Priesm’s outcropping. _::Greetings,::_ comes a feminine voice, warm and clear, sliding through the chatter like a hot knife through butter. _::I had hoped you would bring him, Priesmyk.::_

 _::Greetings,::_ Priesm says back, and folds iemself down, ies front paws crossed over themselves. _::Where is she?::_

 _::Busy,::_ the dragon says with what seems like genuine regret, her eyes fixed upon Vio. He feels very small, especially when he notices the harness around the new dragon’s neck.

It’s beautiful, all dark, buttery-soft leather and shiny bronze worked in a web, looking much more regal (and much more comfortable) than Vio’s own contraption of rope and bungee cords. He feels a little ashamed, honestly, to come here with Priesm looking like…this.

The opalescent dragon laughs at him. It’s not quite a nice laugh, but it’s not mean, and Priesm is laughing with her, so it’s not bad. Just embarrassing. _::Do not be ashamed,::_ she tells him, voice warm. _::My Bonded has had years to improve her harness, and has many resources to do so. Do not compare yourself to her, especially so newly bonded, but a blink.::_

 _::This is true,::_ Priesm rumbles, and gives Vio a reassuring nudge inside his head. _::Introduce yourself, hatchling.::_

Oh. _Oh._

Somehow, he’d thought Priesm would be the one to do all the introducing. “I, uh,” he says, throat dry as he loosens the cords around his calves. “My name is Vio. I, um. Priesm found me a few months ago.”

The dragon lifts her head a little closer, until she is nearly level with Vio’s own. She sniffs, but politely, and Vio feels the rush of air move out then in when she exhales. _::I taste the weight of destiny on you, little windbond,::_ she says, _::though that is unsurprising, as you are bonded to the--::_

 _::Not yet,::_ Priesm says, and the opalescent dragon blinks.

 _::What do you mean, not yet?::_ If Vio didn’t know any better, he’d think she’s offended. _::Are you telling me you have told him nothing of who you are?::_

 _::He knows some,::_ Priesm allows with an audible grumble, claws kneading the stone in front of iem.

The opalescent dragon huffs and shakes the mane surrounding her head. _::I am going to rectify this, and you are not allowed to stop me,::_ she says dangerously. Priesm tilts ies head, staring at her, and only when she ducks her own into a posture a little less rebellious does ie relent, looking away in dismissal. _::Little windbond, will you come to me? We will not go far, but instruction is best done nearest, and my neck is getting tired.::_

Vio blinks. “Is that…okay? Your bonded—she will not mind?” Would _Priesm?_

Clearly not, as Priesm huffs laughter the moment the thought crosses his mind and lays ies neck down, making it easier for Vio to wriggle free. _::No, little windbond,::_ says the opalescent dragon with what feels like a smile. _::She knows_ **_of_ ** _you, knows that Priesmyk had found ies bonded, and will not begrudge my instruction. I am a Light dragon, after all; instruction is what I am best at.::_ She ducks her head invitingly, broad and flat enough to rest spread-eagled on, and with a last look at Priesm Vio takes the few tentative steps to the middle of her broad muzzle.

She lowers him down, so delicately and carefully that he doesn’t even wobble, and curls to rest herself around him. The walls of her sides rise so much higher and longer than Priesm’s it’s disorienting for a long second, and Vio has to rub his eyes. _::Do not worry,::_ she says again, soft and sweet. _::I have been longing to talk to you for some time. My Bonded and I have been ever so curious!::_

“Really?” Vio asks, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I—I mean, I do not know what to say, I am just…” He shrugs, tongue-tied at the sight of this beautiful, massive dragon with all her attention fixed on him. “I am adjusting,” he says finally. “All of this is so new, but…I would not change any of it.”

 _::That is what she thought you might say,::_ the dragon says, indefinably pleased. _::Tell me what happened.::_

So he does, explains the dark, misty night that he’d been called through the forest to the middle of a clearing to meet two legends, explains how he’d come back the week after, just to be sure; he doesn’t explain the bonding itself, that’s far too personal, but he does give her a sketchy overview of what magic he’s managed to scrape up in the past month or so, and she seems impressed.

 _::Well done!::_ she says. _::My bonded was far slower to pick up even the basics than you were, though she was also far, far smaller.::_

That’s a bit of a surprise; Vio’s fairly small for his age. “Um,” he says, not sure if it’ll be rude or not, “may I ask, how old was your bonded when you found her?”

 _::I believe her father told me she was six,::_ says the dragon musingly. Vio’s jaw drops a bit, both at the age and the mention of her parent.

“You mean—her father knows?” he gets out, a little shocked. “How did—“

 _::Some of us are fated more than others, little windbond,::_ the dragon says, her voice unmistakably fond. _::There has been a bond between her family and the Light Flight for ages upon ages.::_

Leaving Vio with that tidbit to chew on, she goes on. _::You know you are a windbond, of course, and I have just explained what I am, but has your bonded taught you about any of the rest of us?::_ When Vio shakes his head she makes a funny little _hrumph_ noise in her throat. _::Of course ie would not,::_ she says despairingly. _::The very basics of bonding, and ie is too busy--::_

Priesm’s head moves toward her, just a fraction, and she averts her eyes the slightest bit, which seems to mollify iem. _::Anyway,::_ she says briskly, _::I will give you an overview._

_::There are six different Flights, three and three; the First and the Second, though none ever really refer to them like that. They say that the Goddesses themselves formed into the first dragons, and created the Earth and then the First; the Fire, Water, and Earth flights, the basic elemental properties. The Second—the Light, Shadow, and Wind flights, came after, when the Goddesses saw that there was more to ofer the world. Look there.::_

Her tail moves, sweeping up and over to point at a pair of briliantly blue and teal dragons conversing a few terraces below. One of them wears a harness that looks like it’s made of seaweed and jewel-bright gems, covered strategically in little scales that shine brilliantly in the dim light; Vio thinks he can see a Zora standing by its side.

 _::A Water dragon, his bonded, and his wingmate, favored flying partner,::_ says the Light dragon. _::They came all the way from the Southern Seas; they will be staying until the next full Dragonmeet council. Over there—::_ she gestures again, and Vio sees a massive bronze dragon lying seemingly somnolent on the lowest terrace before the wide smooth stone floor. _::One of the eldest Earth dragons in this region, though ie does not hold a candle to your Bonded’s bonfire. Ie has raised clutches upon clutches of hatchlings successfully, though ie has never had a Bond. Ie says ie does not care, but sometimes I wonder.::_

Before she can continue, a dragon colored in brilliant red and orange with creamy underbelly plates bounds up. _::They are planning to begin,::_ it says, or that’s how Vio interprets it at least; a burst of excitement and almost-fulfilled anticipation rolling off it in waves. The Light dragon lifts her head in acknowledgement and it goes bounding off, hopping up and down the twenty-foot terraces as if they are inconsequential.

 _::The energy of youth,::_ she says, fondly if despairingly, and Priesm huffs what sounds suspiciously like laughter.

The Light dragon hoists him back up to Priesm’s ledge after that, where he hops back into his usual seat with gratification. It was exhilarating talking to another dragon, another Bonded’s dragon, but at the same time he was so _new_ at this. His lack of knowledge was a bit humiliating.

 _::I am remiss,::_ Priesm says softly to him, turning to look at him out of one dark, liquid eye. _::I will explain more in the following weeks._ ::

“I’d appreciate that,” Vio says, and settles in to listen.

When everyone has settled down, the Water dragon and his bonded take the floor, the Zora armored in the same silver scales that adorn the Water dragon’s harness. _::Is the council called to order?::_ he asks, his mental voice surprisingly deep and resonant.

There are a few audible responses. The Fire dragon from earlier lets out a chirp that has several heads swinging towards it; it huddles down between its wings, but other than that seems unrepressed. _::Then we shall begin.::_

Over the course of the next half hour Vio learns _so many things._

Any dragon has the right to call a Dragonmeet, but many do not use the privilege unless something great is afoot, like a strange upswelling of monsters in one region or another. This is why this particular council has been called; the Southern Sea is seeing strange incidences of long, scaly beasts that are plaguing the Hatching Sands.

 _::Water dragons are, as they sound, hatched exclusively in water,::_ Priesm says to him as an aside. _::The young are amphibious in their first year by nature, aquatic by habit in their second and third; after that they will begin to learn how to hunt on land. The water is safer for a young dragon; at least, it has been.::_

There is some discussion; eventually, a blue-black Water dragon says that she will take news to her wingmates and spread it around, but that she personally will be one who travels south to defend the Hatching Sands. The somnolent Earth dragon and a nearby charcoal-colored dragon that Priesm identifies as belonging to the Shadow flight also offer to attend.

The Water dragon thanks them, as does his Bonded, whom Vio can hear with utter clarity despite being nearly a football field away both vertically and horizontally. When he nudges Priesm about it he gets a _::simple spell you have no reason to know as of yet::_ in response, and grimaces.

The Light dragon slithers down the terraces with sinuous grace, arranging herself on the stone floor as meticulously as any feline Vio has ever seen. _::You all know my Bonded,::_ she says, sounding slightly smug; there is a smattering of audible _hruff_ ing laughter. _::The Ceremony of the Goddesses will be taking place at the dark of the moon two moonturns from now. I will remind everyone again at the next quarter, though spreading it amongst your home haunts would be appreciated.::_

Another thing he is completely unfamiliar, though before Vio can ask Priesm hushes him with a  mental promise to explain later. Then—

Then ie is rising, and Vio has to hastily grab for the harness as Priesm launches iemself, not bothering with the terraces (as they stand almost as high as Priesm is long) and gliding a mere wingsbreadth above them until ie gets to near ground-level; ie makes a wingtip turn and folds them, landing as neat and elegantly as Vio has ever seen him do, and he realizes that his bonded is _showing off._

 _::Hush,::_ Priesm says, and laughs very softly. _::Dragonmeet,::_ he calls, _::Though he is far from his Trials, and far from a speaking member of this council, I wish to present my Bonded.::_

This gets attention.

Every dragon’s gaze is suddenly locked onto Vio. Every rustling wing stills, every side conversation ceases; Vio reaches out instinctively to feel the air moving, and that’s the only indication that he gets that the Council chamber has not been replaced with an exact copy full of stone statues.

A large black dragon, banded with charcoal and sable along its legs and back, rises and slinks down the terraces towards them. From what Vio can tell, it must be twice the height and breadth of Priesm, and he sits back a bit, uneasy. _::Arbiter,::_ he, and the voice is _definitely_ male, says, as if conferring a title. _::Breath of the Wind itself. You mean to say that_ **_you_ ** _, eldest of us all, have taken a Bonded?::_

Priesm stands ies ground, tail coiled neatly around ies feet, even as the Shadow dragon reaches the lower floor and circles them, his dark red eyes with their slit-pupiled stare glaring at him. _::The bond is fated,::_ ie says, nothing but casual, _::as your yantras should have told you in your infancy.::_

Vio stares at the Shadow dragon, who flicks his eyes over to Vio and captures his gaze. He sounds…angry about something, although Vio has no clue what. The Light bonded had seemed almost gleeful that Priesm had bonded, and from Priesm iemself it had sounded like most dragons held a Bonding as sacred, but…

This dragon seemed so dismissive.

 _::Arbiter,::_ says the Shadow dragon again, and this time wings rustle up and down the terraces, dragons swaying their heads to look at their neighbors or flicking their tails back and forth in vague discomfort. _::I call a Dragonmeet to discuss the validity of your last judgement.::_

This gets a reaction.

The Light dragon immediately springs to full attention, her mane flaring and then slicking flat to her head as she _hisses_ , a motion echoed but a breath later by a smattering of other dragons throughout the terraces. The Shadow dragon whirls to hiss back at them, eyes slitting, wings beginning to mantle, a hint of darkness clouding around his feet.

Other dragons seem to shrink into themselves, looking a bit shifty, as if they wish to support this Shadow dragon’s claim.

Vio has no idea what is happening.

 _::Cracked-egg of a hatchling, your yantras should have knocked you off the cliff of your den and taken another,::_ the light dragon says, stepping from terrace to terrace stiffly, her tail lashing near enough to another dragon to get an annoyed response. There’s an eerie, hair-raising whine underpinning her mental voice, strong enough that Vio shudders. _::Priesmyk has never been anything but impartial in ies judgements.::_

 _::You only say that because you wish to curry favor,::_ the Shadow dragon snaps, both mentally and literally, a lightning-fast dart of his head that exposes every sharp, jagged fang in his mouth. _::All who are Bonded are on the side of the Bonded. As if becoming a cur to a weaker race is something to be_ **_lauded._ ** _::_

 _::The bond is a gift from our goddesses!::_ the Light dragon says, the whine rising to a low caterwaul as she hits the floor of the cavern.

 _::The goddesses never existed,::_ the Shadow dragon spits, and they begin to pace around where Priesm sits, still as stone. _::The old stories are just that; stories. There is no higher power. There is no “Sacred Realm.” There is only the here and now, and the law of the land, of fang and claw, of blood and bone.::_

He whirls to face Priesm, as if expecting iem to have moved, and looks almost comically disappointed when Priesm just _sits_ there, as if the two dragons twice ies size are below ies notice. _::If you have a complaint with the arbitration that I passed,::_ ie says, _::then certainly, bring it up before a Dragonmeet. But do not blame myself if they scale you for wasting their time.::_

The Shadow dragon _roars,_ right in front of Priesm’s snout. Vio thinks that his entire body could fit inside that gaping mouth and bites his lower lip viciously so as to not make a noise. _::You had Bonded and told no one! Your judgement had become flawed and you were still allowed to arbitrate--::_

 _::Over a land quarrel.::_ Priesm’s voice is no longer dry; it’s heavy and full of thunder as ie stands, shaking out ies wings. _::Over a hatchling’s dilemma, over a situation that a better dragon would not have allowed to come to fruit. My deliberation would have been the same whether I had bonded or not. You were in the wrong. Your counterpart had claimed the land a full season before you meandered your way there like a moon-struck wildbeast. My arbitration was accepted by a full Council of dragons in front of a full Dragonmeet.::_

The Shadow dragon lunges.

Before Vio can so much as scream, the Light dragon, forgotten, barrels into him from the side. They roll across the cavern floor, snapping and squalling, and the dragons on the terraces begin caterwauling too, some urging them on, some calling for peace, until the air is so thick and heavy and laden with menace that Vio slaps his hands over his eyes and _screams,_ feeling like his brain is about to melt.

 _::That is quite enough,::_ Priesm agrees. _::Cover your ears, beloved.::_

Vio barely has enough time to follow his directions when Priesm stretches ies neck out to its full length, fills his chest wide enough that Vio can feel him trembling beneath him, and lets out an ear-splitting howl.

This is no ordinary noise. This vibrates up and down the spectrum of hearing, vibrating Vio down to his very bones, making his teeth rattle and his eyes tear up, a ghostly howl that silences every dragon in the crater and tears the two fighting dragons apart to scrabble at the ground.

In the resulting silence, Priesm says again sharply _::That is_ **_enough._ ** _::_

The Light dragon is the first to wobble to her feet. She looks as if she would have continued the fight, but Priesm jerks ies head and she moves, looking a little resentful. Vio notices that her beautiful harness is in shreds, hanging by one frayed leather strap.

When the Shadow dragon goes to rise, though, Priesm takes two quick bounds forward, stomping one forepaw down on his throat, and he freezes.

Vio does too. He’s never seen his Bonded move this fast, like a thought. Though that molten silver paw is comparatively small, the talons are wickedly sharp, and Priesm has them pressed right into the softest scales at the joint of his neck. _::You have given insult, cracked-egg,::_ ie says smoothly. _::Will you rectify?::_

The Shadow dragon hisses, but Priesm flexes ies paw and he whimpers, tail going limp. _::Apologies,::_ he says, with the faintest hint of resent. _::Your judgement is immaculate as ever. I will not summon the Dragonmeet.::_ His tone seems to signify a “yet” at the end, but Priesm chooses to let it slide, removing ies paw and disdainfully turning ies back. Ie lets ies tail thwack the Shadow dragon a solid hit in the side of his head as he moves.

 _::Does anyone else contest my impartiality as an arbiter?::_ ie calls, the set of ies wings and the stance of ies body wide and confident. Ie means business, and one by one the other dragons make noises of assent. _::Then I call this quarter-Council ended, and may we all be about our business.::_

Ie doesn’t wait any longer than that, but launches iemself nearly straight up, arrowing up and out of the caldera so quickly that no other dragons have even left the ground.

With a jolt, Vio feels his Bonded growling beneath him. “There is a lot I want explained,” he says a bit threadily, and Priesm only growls longer in response.

They don’t go back to Vio’s house, and Vio privately mourns the loss of time to do his school work. Instead they coast until they’re following the River Hylia down to the shore, a favorite spot for the both of them, and Priesm lands in the shallows, bidding Vio to dismount.

Ie stands there taking deep quaffs of the lake water when a shadow passes over them. Vio, still tense from the almost-fight, startles, but Priesm doesn’t even look up.

A few seconds later the Light dragon drops to a landing in the middle of the lake and starts snaking her way towards them. She beaches not half a minute later, shaking the drops from her wings. Vio flinches away, remembering too late that he can pull up a screen of wind to deflect the worst of them; by the time he does, the dragon is long done and already stomping her way up the shore through the sand. _::I cannot believe him,::_ she says, low and furiuos. _::How dare he cast aspersions on your judgement!::_

Priesm doesn’t reply for a long moment, still drinking; when ie finally lifts ies head up, the moonlight sparkles along the water dripping down his scales like diamonds. _::He is young, and foolish,::_ ie says after a long moment. _::He has never liked my sway in the Dragonmoot.::_

 _::Cracked-egg,::_ the light dragon agrees with a snap of her jaw. _::Little windbond, I come to ask a favor.::_

Vio blinks. “A favor of me?”

 _::Yes, you, littlest one; I would not call Priesmyk little_ **_anything_ ** _in ies presence.::_

 _::A wise decision,::_ Priesm affirms, and _chuffs_ laughter as ie wades ies way back in.

The Light dragon turns her gaze back to Vio, laying her head on the grassy knoll past the shore. _::My name is_ **_Hľadač pravdy z nepriechodné siahne_ ** _; you may call me Siahne,::_ she says, and blinks her opalescent golden eyes at him. _::Your hands are deft and quick; that cracked-egg tore my Bonded’s harness, and I cannot get it off myself.::_ A low hiss underruns her speech; she’s clearly unhappy about the damage, as proud of the harness as she was.

Vio says “Of course” immediately, stepping forward a little nervously. Siahne has been nothing but friendly but the fact remains that she’s twice the size of Priesm. He’s never been so close to another dragon as he has been with her tonight.

But she doesn’t make any sort of threatening move, even lowers her entire bulk to the ground to make it easier for Vio to climb all over her, sawing through some of the damp leather that’s too torn to save, carefully preserving as much of the rest as he can. “Um,” he says when he’s finished, presenting the sopping bundle. “I can tie this together for you to make it a little easier to carry, put a loop in it that you can wrap your claws around.”

 _::Clever windbond!::_ Siahne says, clearly delighted. _::Please do. My Bonded will be upset enough as it is; I will have to relay my fight to her, and she has never been overly enthusiastic with the rougher aspects of my nature. She embraces them, as she must, as must I, but she is not happy.::_

Vio has to cannibalize a bit of his own harness to make do, but he doesn’t really mind; he’s going to be spending the weekend figuring out how to purloin some better materials anyway, especially after seeing both the Water dragon and Siahne’s harnesses. If this is a point of pride among them, he’s going to make sure Priesm’s harness is the most elegant and beautiful it can be.

There’s little else; she thanks him and takes off, Priesm diverting the wind from her wings so that it strikes neither of them. They stand in silence, watching her disappear into the night sky, a beautiful iridescent streak like a shooting star.

“So,” Vio says finally, the tension still hanging in the air driving him to speak. “That dragon did not seem to like you very much.”

 _::He is young,::_ Priesm says, lowering iemself to the sand. _::I made a decision he did not agree with, and he resents it. He thought to use you as a weapon against me in front of the Dragonmeet. I proved to him why that would be a bad idea.::_

“Yes,” Vio says, and shudders. “He didn’t like the fact that you bonded to me?”

_::Though the Bonded among our race are few, we hold great sway, as we are a bridge between your world and ours, the past and the future, the magical and the mundane. Our Bondeds go freely among their population, able to teach us how the world changes; we dragons patrol the skies and the earth and the seas, keeping them and theirs safe from harm. It is a relationship that benefits all, from the very first, when the goddesses ordained it to be so. Some resent that.::_

“He said—“

 _::He was wrong,::_ Priesm says firmly, and Vio can feel the air that rushes past him when ie huffs. _::The goddesses, though they have not shown their faces to this land in an age upon an age, are as real as you and I. The young do not have the memories of the long dark times that I do. All they have known is security, is safety and comfort. Though I would not wish anyone to revisit those times.::_

Vio mulls that thought over for a moment or three, idly catching a wisp of wind and using it to fan himself dry. “How many bonded are there?” he asks.

 _::Less than you would hope, though more than we have had in a long time,::_ Priesm says. _::Enough to count thrice over on your doubled hands. No more.::_

“Just _thirty?”_ Vio blurts, appalled. “For how many dragons?”

_::Near five centuries, not counting the hatchlings and the eggs still laid, last I knew.::_

“Five hundred? And only thirty of those are bonded?”

 _::Yes. As I said, we are few and far between. It is rare to have so many in one place as we do right now. The Lightbonded, the Shadowbonded, you and I… I do not like it. Things are brewing, things long put away stirring again.::_ Ie looks up towards the clouds scudding over the moon like a thin, ragged curtain. _::It is not here yet, but it approaches.::_

Vio shudders, his arms wrapping around himself, and moves to stand in the lee of Priesm’s body to rest against his side.

 _::You will be safe, beloved.::_ Ie ducks ies head, letting Vio wrap his arms around iem. _::Whatever happens, I will make it so.::_

“I know,” Vio says, and closes his eyes. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, i love love love to hear feedback from you! please feel free to leave me a comment <3


	4. Shadow, Spring, 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter carries a content/trigger warning for domestic violence. For further information, skip to the bottom notes.

_It’s dark._

_It’s dark and he’s small and there’s something wrong, something very, very wrong._

_There was screaming; there were words he didn’t really understand; there were things he couldn’t comprehend, and now it’s even darker and the night is flashing past faster than he can make out, and there’s something behind him, something old and large and unknowable, something that, when it catches him, will eat him whole and move onto its next meal without even remembering his_ **_name—_ **

**_“_ ** _Hush,” something says, low and rumbly, and he feels steel bands closing around his chest. “Not a sound, now. It’s coming.”_

_Darkness and fire and blood and screaming and a face, a face in the darkness, a face that knows the taste of his soul and reaches out with long, scaled hands—_

Shadow jerks upright with a muffled shout.

Shit. _That_ nightmare again; the back of his shirt is soaked with sweat, and his bedsheets are a rumpled mess. He must’ve been tossing and turning since he fell asleep.

He checks the clock; 3:05 am.  Longer than he slept last night, that’s for damn sure, but still not enough to ensure he’ll be awake and coherent for school tomorrow. Fuck. He can’t skip again; two more in this semester and he’ll have the school counselor six feet up his ass for the rest of the year, and that’s not something he can risk.

Not with his uncle fresh out of work and snoring on the couch downstairs. The walls are so thin he can hear it like a chainsaw; no wonder he’d woken up. Almost a miracle he hadn’t woken up sooner, though that would have been too much to ask for.

He hates this fucking nightmare. It only happens once a month or so, but even that’s too much too often; there’s no way he’ll be able to get back to sleep tonight, not with the adrenaline telling him to _run_ still racing through his veins. No guarantee he’ll be able to sleep tomorrow, either.

Shit. Like he needed this. There’s a biology test tomorrow he was doomed to fail anyway, but that didn’t mean—

There’s a noise. There’s a noise outside his window, like the wind, but not like the wind at all.  Like a sheet of paper sliding over another, whisper soft, only…loud. He doesn’t want to look outside; he really doesn’t want to look outside. He’s not afraid of the dark at all, but after a nightmare like this…

“Don’t be a pussy,” he mumbles to himself, and slips out of bed, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders.

The window is fogged with condensation. This house has shit insulation. He rubs a patch free with the corner of his blanket, or rather, tries to. It looks like all of it is gathered on the outside; he’ll have to swing the window up and open to see anything outside. “There’s nothing out there, you dumb bitch,” he says under his breath, unlatches the window, and pulls it up.

Only to be met with a glowing red eye the size of a beach ball.

Shadow shrieks and stumbles backwards, tripping on the edge of the blanket beneath him and falling flat on his ass. He scrabbles backwards as far as he can, tripping and flailing, the blanket snagging around his legs like brambles or seaweed until he’s pressed against the far wall, gasping for breath, adrenaline and terror speeding through his veins like ice. Whatever the fuck is out there is big enough that it’s looking through his second-story window with ease, and an eye that big has to have a head proportional enough to fit it.

He’s totally about to die. He’s about to die to the thing in the dark from his nightmares.

Like a scene straight out of his nightmares,  a wickedly sharp snout shoves its way as far as it can into the window, scaled nostrils flaring, forked tongue slipping out between what looks like a hint of fangs. It’s gonna rip the house apart next, Shadow knows this part.

There’s nothing he can do.

He closes his eyes and waits for death.

What he’s not expecting is a cool, vaguely feminine voice to say “Come outside.”

His eyes flick open.

“The fuck?” he breathes, rubbing his eyes. Great, now he’s hallucinating as well as on the verge of imminent death.

“Come outside,” he hears again, but this time it’s…he rubs his ears.  He’s not…hearing it? It’s not coming through his ears, because when he claps his hands over them he can still hear it. _::Come outside. Come to me, where you belong.::_

“Fuck _off,_ ” he groans. “This isn’t happening, I’m fucking losing it, it was only a matter of time, and now I’m hearing things—“

_::You are hearing_ **_me,_ ** _hatchling,::_ says the voice, clearly disgruntled. _::Come outside to me. I have much to show you.::_

…no.

Hell no.

Hell _fucking_ no.

He refuses to accept that the nightmare outside (and he can still see that baleful red eye trying to peer in through the window) is _talking_ to him. He’d rather be insane. He _might actually be_ insane.

“Fuck off,” he says instead, and crawls under his bed, snagging his pillow and throwing it over his head.

_::I know you are in there. I know you can hear me. I smell you.::_

“Go _away!_ ” Shadow snaps. “I’m not—I’m not listening!”

_::I can tell.::_ The voice is very wry. _::Why do you resist your fate so?::_

“Because I don’t want my _fate_ to be “ _eaten by my literal nightmare,”_ you dumb bint,” Shadow snaps, though why he’s talking back he has no clue. “Now go _away!_ ”

There’s no answer to that, but he does hear a slowly fading rustling noise, and when he finally uncurls himself and crawls out  covered in dust, the eye is gone.

The gouges in his windowsill remain, though, and he runs a disbelieving finger over one before forcibly shoving it out of his mind. No.

It was a dream. He’ll go to sleep, he’ll wake up, and it will all have been a dream.

It’s not a dream.

The gouges are still there, stark tan gashes against the white paint of the windowsill, and Shadow mildly wants to die.

Not in the least because he still has his biology test.

High school sucks.

The day creeps past at a literally agonizing pace; he naps through wood shop because the teacher doesn’t give a shit and spends the lunch period tucked in the darkest corner of the band room he can find. His head is throbbing. He doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to face the reality of the marks on his windowsill, of his pillow still on the floor, of his blanket covered in dust. He doesn’t want to face the other, sharper reality of his uncle, undoubtedly drunk and snoring on the couch still, either.

There’s not a lot else he can do though.

He takes the bus back home and scales the tree next to his bedroom rather than go through the front door like he does at least twice a week. Sometimes it’ll let him go an entire week without seeing the drunk bastard.

He hates that the scratches on the sill give him almost perfect fingerholds, letting him kick off the vinyl siding and roll inside with minimal effort.

Maybe…maybe tonight he’ll be able to sleep better; the nap during woodshop has well worn off.

But of course not.

Shadow wakes to another whispered _::Come outside::_ and moans into his pillow, feeling absolutely pathetic. Why.

“Why,” he says out loud, still face-down, hoping that maybe he’ll smother.

_::Because I am here,::_ says the voice, still vaguely female, still pragmatic. _::It is rude to keep me waiting.::_

“I told you, you dumb fuck, I’m not coming out there so you can eat me!” Shadow yells before he can help himself, throwing the pillow at the window.

He forgot it was open, though, and it sails right through. _Shit._ That was his favorite; the other one is too lumpy to even think about sleeping on.

The thing outside _huffs_ , and his curtains blow back; then the snout from before returns, only—only it’s got his pillow tucked in its teeth, and it sorta…snudges it back through the window as delicately as it can, though its scales grate against the edges of the window again. _::Why would I eat you?::_ it asks. _::You would be no more than a mouthful, and a very crunchy one at that. You are too bony. A human your size should have more to it than elbows.::_

“Excuse me, did you just say you wanted to fatten me up?” Shadow asks, incredulous. “This is not wanting to eat me _how??_ ”

_::Besides, humans do not taste very good. All…angles and spite.::_

“Yeah, because we don’t like getting _eaten!”_

_::If I promise not to eat you, will you come outside?::_ it asks, as if that’s a _reasonable_ request from a terrifying hellbeast from Shadow’s deepest nightmares.

“ _Fuck_ no!”

_::Will you at least come to the window so I can see you, then?::_

“Why do you even want to see me!” Shadow says in despair. “Why are you _here!!_ ”

_::Because you are mine,::_ the thing outside his window says, and huffs again. _::I would not eat you even if I wanted to. Come to the window.::_

Shadow knows he shouldn’t. He knows that deep inside his cold little heart. But maybe if he goes over there and throws his _other_ pillow the thing will go away and he’ll be able to sleep. He grabs it and, so armed, steps as cautiously as he can towards the open window.

He peeks outside.

The eye is still there, though farther back, and now that he’s not exhausted and terrified he sees it’s a mottled, variegated red, slit through the middle with a vertical pupil.

Just as he was afraid of, too, the head that houses it is proportional. He can’t make it all out, it’s too dark, but the half-moon illuminates a long, black muzzle covered in thick scales; wide-spreading horns; a neck that snakes away into the dark; and far, far too many glistening ivory fangs for his liking.

With a jolt, he realizes that the thing is _laughing_ at him.

_::There you are,::_ it says, unmistakably content. _::Too small by far, though we shall fix that.::_

“We’re fixing nothing!” Shadow snaps, folding his arms on the windowsill. The thing is far enough away that he feels like he can duck away if it comes at him, and besides, he’s not really getting a vibe of “menace” from it anymore. “You can fix it by going away!”

_::Why would I go away when you are here?::_ the thing asks, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Because—“ Shadow falters. “Because you’re a weird terrifying monster and I want nothing to do with you??”

_::I am not a_ **_monster_ ** _,::_ the thing says, and bares its fangs. Shadow doesn’t hear it growl, but he feels it in his bones, and sorta regrets leaning on the open window like this. _::I am a dragon, and the most majestic of my kind.::_

“Yeah, and I’m the King of Hyrule,” Shadow mutters. “Look. Mister dragon.”

_::Mister is…male? I am not male.::_

“Okay, lady, whatever, lady dragon, sure,” Shadow says, scrubbing his hands through his hair in exasperation. “Dragon lady, can you just go away? Please? I’m trying to sleep.”

_::You are sleeping through the best hours of the night,::_ the dragon says, a little petulant. Her head snakes towards Shadow, but stops when he flinches back. _::You should be out here riding the night wind with me.::_

“Yeah. No. Not gonna happen,” Shadow says flatly. “Nuh uh. I know this plan, and it ends up with me getting eaten. Crunch crunch gone.”

_::You are very fixated on me eating you.::_

“Yeah, because your head is the size of my entire body and then some, and if you tried there’s not much I could do to stop you!”

_::But I will not try. I do not want to.::_

“That’s what they all say. At least, that’s what they all say in the stories. And then, _crunch._ ”

The dragon huffs again, its teeth white in the moonlight. _::You would not make a crunch with me. Just a gulp.::_

“Oh, and that makes everything so much better,” Shadow says, dripping sarcasm. “Will you go away now? I have school tomorrow and I’ve already fucked up enough for the week.”

_::Is that what you call that red stone den you visit many days?::_ the dragon asks, seemingly interested.

“The red stone wha— _are you following me to school??”_

_::Sometimes. It is very boring waiting for you to get out, so I often nap in the forest.::_

“Good for you. Now for those of us who _don’t_ have that opportunity, it’s sleep time.”

_::I will see you tomorrow night, then,::_ says the dragon, and it sounds like seven hells of smug.

“Like hell you will,” Shadow mumbles, but something deep inside of him knows that he’s fighting a losing battle.

He fucks up after a week or two of the night visits, which, surprisingly, aren’t as bad as when they first started.  He hasn’t had a nightmare since the first night, maybe because coming face-to-snout with a mouthful of serrated fangs easily as long as forearm means that there’s not all that much that can scare you left in the world.

But what he isn’t doing is sleeping, and that…makes things difficult.

Like now, when he’s hissing in discomfort and holding his hand under the cold water faucet, having just burned himself trying to cook spaghetti.

His life, right? It’s not like he was trying to do something _complicated._

And the spaghetti is burned onto the bottom of the pan, because he got distracted by a stupid scaly asshole hanging around outside the kitchen window and had to go chase her off again, and his uncle is due home any second—

Fuck. That was the door slamming open.

As if to make his life complete, the smoke alarm starts blaring, and there’s a shout of anger from the front room.

“Great,” Shadow mumbles under his breath, transfers the pan under the water to soak, and hops up on the kitchen counter to waft some less smoky air at the screaming alarm until it mercifully silences itself with a sad-sounding _bwee-oop._

Then it’s just…time to face the music.

The music being his uncle standing in the front room, loosening the suit jacket that bulges over his beer belly and looking thunderous. “Yo,” Shadow says, already tired of this. He knows this dance; Uncle Maverick will bitch, and Shadow will apologize, and there’ll be yelling and more apologizing until Shadow gets dismissed to lurk back upstairs like a scolded child.

And there it is. His uncle opens his mouth, puffs up like a fuckin’—like a pufferfish or some shit, Shadow doesn’t know or care, he’s too busy drowning out the shouting. It’s all the same shit anyway—“useless fucker”; “shouldn’t have taken you in”; “your dad would be ashamed”, which stings, but Shadow refuses to let him see it.

He plays his part. He ducks his head and apologizes, though it burns sour and galling in his throat.

But something’s weird. Something’s off about Uncle Mav’s reactions. He’s usually a little more dismissive; right now, it looks like he’s gaining steam.

And…advancing on Shadow.

This is something new and uncomfortable; it’s not like Mav hasn’t smacked him one or two before, but that was always…careless in a way. This looks like he means business.

And…he does. He gets Shadow once in the gut and once high in the chest before Shadow folds down in on himself, all the breath knocked out of him, gasping for air. It’s been too long; he can’t hide the pained wheeze, and his uncle adds insult to injury and throws his disgusting smelly jacket over Shadow’s face when he tries to straighten. “I should’ve tossed you onto the street forever ago,” Mav hisses, face red and voice disgusted. “Should’ve never promised your dad—“

What he promised Shadow never finds out, because there’s a low, bone-rattling roar from outside, and something hits the living room window hard enough that it shatters. Mav shrieks and lets Shadow go, staggering and falling back onto the carpet, and Shadow takes the opportunity to try and scrabble towards the front door.

It’s made easy when the front door vanishes in a hail of splinters, a massive, wickedly-taloned foot pulling back through. _::I will kill him,::_ the dragon hisses into Shadow’s mind, and he hears her outside, her voice wavering through high enough registers to make every hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Mav is shouting “What the _fuck—“_ when the paw sweeps back in through the shattered window and grabs him.

Shadow is up on his feet before he has time to think, racing out the front door in time to see his uncle go sprawling across the grass, his shirt ripped, bleeding from shallow scratches. The dragon—and holy fuck, she is so much bigger than he thought she was—is standing between them, her massive wings mantled  half-spread from her body, a threatening teakettle wail high and shivery in the air. _::Kill him,::_ she says again, and Shadow can feel her intent like it’s his own.

Part of him…part of him wants to let her. Part of him wants to let her put this fucker down, wants her to stomp him into the ground, wants retribution for every bruise, every yell.

But..part of him doesn’t, and that part makes him run forward towards where that massive head (it’s gotta be easily the size of Mav’s station wagon) is snaking forward, every single dagger-edged fang bared.

He steps in front of her, like he has some sort of death wish, and slams his palms onto her snout. “Stop!”

She…she stops. She could push him aside and go for the kill as easy as breathing, but she _stops,_ and he can feel her quivering. Can feel her under his palms and in his head. She wants revenge, revenge for all of Shadow’s hurts. “Stop,” he says more quietly, and pushes.

She moves her head back, but not far enough to be out of the reach of his hands. He keeps one palm on her snout as he turns back to his uncle, not knowing why he’s trusting this literal nightmare at his back more than his flesh and blood.

Mav hauls himself up and spits something off to the side. “Figures,” he says, sounding disgusted. “Figures you wouldn’t have the spine to let it happen.”

He feels the dragon’s muzzle wrinkle, feels the huff of air at his back as she snarls, but somehow he’s never felt safer. Or more conflicted.

_::Let me,::_ she hisses, and it takes everything in him for Shadow to say _“No.”_

She growls louder. She snaps her jaw shut, her long, thin tongue flickering out between a gap in the plates. _::It is not meet that he should live after hurting you.::_

“He’s been doing it for most of my life,” Shadow says, exhausted. “This isn’t anything different.”

Abruptly he’s tired. He’s tired of this farce, of living in a home with someone who obviously hates him, someone who resents him for reasons Shadow doesn’t know and can’t describe. “I’m outside with you,” he says, “and you haven’t eaten me yet.”

_::You are catching on, hatchling,::_ the dragon says. _::Come away with me. Let us ride the night wind.::_

Shadow says _“Yes_ ” before he can help himself.

By then it’s too late; she’s grabbed him in one massive scaled claw and bounded upwards, sending his uncle sprawling again below with the force of her backdraft.

He screams; he’s not ashamed to admit it. He can barely see, the wind around him is so thick and fierce, and for a brief and shining moment he thinks he’s wet himself. _Nice going, fuckhead!_ He thinks in mild panic. _Now she’s just gonna take you somewhere and eat you!!!_

But she doesn’t. After about five minutes, the deep, heavy wingbeats settle out into a smooth glide, and the wind lessens enough that Shadow can tentatively peer over the cage of talons encasing him.

They’re gliding above Lake Hylia.

Shadow can’t help his awed “Holy shit” as the dragon slowly spirals down until it feels like they’re barely above the surface, gliding along fast enough that the surface beneath them trails behind in a rippling vee. The moon is a long, bright line among the ripples, the thin and ragged clouds veiling it for brief seconds at a time.

It’s gorgeous. It’s calm and gorgeous. It’s just what he needed, and the dragon is blessedly, blessedly silent as he stares.

She takes him over the lake for a long, long time, but finally he feels her shift upward, feels her wings sweep powerfully down and launch them higher into the air, away from the calm soothing water. The fear Shadow thought he was over flares back to life, only growing when she doesn’t turn back towards Castle Town. Instead they head for the mountains bordering the lake. “Uh,” he calls up, his voice thin and snatched away by the wind. “Yo, where the hell are we going?”

_::I will not let you return to that den without protection,::_ the dragon says, and Shadow can—he can somehow taste her fury at the back of his tongue. But under the fury is—protectiveness?

“Why?” Shadow asks, frowning. “You don’t know me. Why the hell are you so interested in me?”

She doesn’t answer, winging between the gently rounded mountain peaks deftly until she closes in on a particular one. He can see the dark gaping hole in the mountainside, but it doesn’t hit him that that’s where they’re heading until the dragon is deftly backwinging in, landing a little awkwardly on her back legs and using her wings to stabilize her as she sets Shadow down.

She does it so gently. The claws that rent his uncle’s shirt have done nothing to harm him.

_::You will stay here tonight,::_ the dragon says, pacing towards the back of the cave, _::with me. I have some things that humans seem to like. You are welcome to any of them.::_

She’s…not wrong. Shadow spies an old couch tilted haphazardly on its edge, propped up by what looks like a collapsing baby grand piano. Trinkets and sparkly things lay scattered across the floor, leading up to what looks like a pile of miscellaneous junk.

“I didn’t think that the “dragons hoard shit” thing was true,” he mumbles, “but here we are.”

The dragon just looks at him as she settles on top of the pile, and Shadow winces as it crunches and groans beneath her. He doesn’t take the couch yet, either, though it does look at least some sort of comfortable, preferring to pace around the open area. “Look,” he says finally, “we need to talk. About this whole kidnapping me thing. About why you haven’t let me sleep for the past two months. Just, why?”

The question comes out a lot more plaintively than he meant it to and he spins to a halt, shoving his suddenly balled fists into the pockets of his hoodie.

The dragon lowers her head down to his eye level, which means she’s resting her massive chin on the ground. _::Because you are meant to be mine,::_ she says, soft and somehow sweet. _::You are my bondmate. You are the soul that was meant to cleave to mine. I am surprised I have found you so soon in my life. I am surprised that I have found you at all.::_

Shadow blinks.

He opens his mouth.

He closes it again.

Finally, he just says _“What??”_ and throws his arms up in the air, feeling like it’s the only reaction he can make. “What the fuck are you talking about??”

He feels her laugh inside his head, which is a not entirely unpleasant sensation, but still weird. She stretches, long and luxurious, and digs her claws into the stone as she arches her back much like a cat might. Only, a cat wouldn’t be leaving six-inch-deep furrows in the ground when its claws retract. _::I am a dragon,::_ she says, as if this explains everything. _::Dragons have Bonded; people who compliment them, people who are meant for them, who they are meant for. Many dragons live and die without meeting them. Very few search for them. I was not looking, and yet I felt you anyway, and here you are.::_

“Okay, none of that makes sense, but why _me,_ ” Shadow stresses. “What the hell makes _me_ so special that – that you’d come out of the woods or wherever to just stalk me??”

_::I just told you,::_ the dragon says, and huffs. _::Perhaps you should listen to me more closely, hatchling.::_

“Wh—hatchling, what, shut up.”

_::Nobody knows why the bond chooses who it does. All I know is that my heart cries out to yours, and yours answers.::_

“That sounds stupid,” Shadow mutters. “I’m – I just, this all sounds so ridiculous, I didn’t even think dragons _existed_ two months ago and now you’re telling me I’m _fated_ to be some sort of super special snowflake dragonman?”

_::None of the words you just said made any sense,::_ the dragon—shit, he can’t fucking keep calling her ‘the dragon’ in his head—says, sounding bemused. _::If you bonded with me, perhaps I would understand.::_

“Oh no. Oh, no no no. I’m not doing this.” Shadow turns on his heel and strides towards the mouth of the cave. “I’m not signing up for any of this fantasy shit. There’s no way—look. This is a dream. You’re a dragon offering me some sort of magical life partnership. I’ve fucking lost it. Wake me up and send me to the funny farm.”

The dragon snakes her head forward to rest at his side. He doesn’t look, but feels the urge to lean against it. It’s a very strong urge; he sways towards her before he realises some of the longing comes from her. “Stop that.”

_::I do not want to,::_ she says, very plainly. _::An adult dragon’s existence is a lonely one, unless you are a_ **_yantras_ ** _with a dragonet, or a trio in a mating negotiation. I enjoy your presence, and wish to have it always.::_

“Well, you’re the only one,” Shadow says, a little bitter. “Not many people want me around them.”

_::All the more reason to bond with me; then we will have each other.::_

“I don’t—look, dragon lady, I can’t just keep calling you “dragon” in my head,” Shadow says, exasperated. “Do you have a name or something?”

The dragon laughs, both in his mind and with short, sharp huffs that show off her teeth. _::My wing-name is_ **_Najtmavšie tieň najdlhší noci_ ** _.::_

When she says it, Shadow feels a shudder run through him—the words aren’t just words, somehow, they’re deeper than that, because Shadow gets the weirdest sense of depth and darkness, the stillest shadows on a moonless night at the dark of the year, and the things lurking inside those shadows waiting to strike. He shudders, chafes at his arms trying to rub away the goosebumps. “Okay. Do you have…a shorter name?”

_::You may call me Noci, if you must,::_ says the dragon—says _Noci,_ and shoves her head into Shadow’s stomach. _::Scratch above my eyeridges, I have an itch.::_

“The fuck I will,” Shadow says, but his hands are raising up without his consent anyway.

He doesn’t spend the night on the couch. He spends it curled up in the hollow at the base of her wings, huddled under a thick, raggedy blanket, and he doesn’t think he’s ever slept a night as well in his life.

 

_::Come outside.::_

“Fuck off,” Shadow says casually, not looking up from his notebook. “I have homework.”

_::What is ‘home work?’::_

“Literal torture. Fuckin’ useless, is what it is, if they can’t teach it to me well enough in class then they should be the ones relearning it, am I right?” Shadow sgrumbles. He hates geometry, hates it with a passion. Fucking proofs. Nobody needs to know this shit. _Shadow_ certainly doesn’t, he’s not gonna be touching math like this with a ten foot pole in the future.

_::If you do not like it, you should come outside with me,::_ Noci wheedles, and he sees her eye hovering outside his window. _::The night is young and fresh, and there is much to explore. I can take you to the badlands, to an ancient battlefield yet untouched by time, where the bones of armies lie ragged and scattered across the ground and even the ravens do not deign to peck through the remains.::_

“Sounds boring,” Shadow says, and tries to hide a smile.

_::I could take you to the edge of the southern sea, where the great fresh lake spills into it, and show you where the water dragons clutch their eggs, and where the dragonets play in the shallows among the coral.::_

“That’s boring too. Babies are dumb.”

_::I could show you my teeth,::_ Noci rumbles, and Shadow finally laughs, spins his chair around to go to the window.

“Noci, I’d love to come with you tonight,” he says, genuinely regretful. “But I really do have a lot of work. Maybe this weekend, when the asshole won’t notice I’m gone anyway.”

_::You humans and your arbitrary timekeeping,::_ Noci grumbles. _::One sunround is much like another. And besides, the last “week end” you said you were busy as well.::_

“Well, I promise for this one,” Shadow says, and leans out the window to stroke the top of her eyeridge. Her lids close the slightest bit, and she rumbles and pushes her head up into his hand.

It’s still awe-inspiring, that he’s touching this massive monstrosity with no (okay, very little) fear of having his arm taken off.

_::You would not have to fear at all,::_ Noci says _, ::if you simply bonded with me.::_

_“_ Nope,” Shadow says, patting her sharply. “Still not convinced that your weird bonding fantasy isn’t some sorta trap to steal my soul or something. Not that I’m particularly attached to it, but souls are valuable commodities. Might’ve been planning to trade mine to a demon or something.”

Noci stills, then pulls her head away, raising it to look at him very seriously. _::Do not say that,::_ she says, intent on him. _::Never say that. Even the saying might invite one in.::_

“What?” Shadow blinks at her. “I—I was joking, there aren’t really demons around, are there?”

_::This is not a discussion I will have here,::_ Noci says. _::Either you come with me and I will explain, or you will not get to know.::_

It’s not even a choice. Shadow mentally kisses the rest of his GPA goodbye and slips out the window onto her head, climbing down her neck and grabbing hold of the wide rope they’d hooked around her neck just a few nights ago. “Fine, okay, sure, where are we going.”

_::Up,::_ Noci says with a twinge of satisfaction, and launches herself. Shadow lets out a whoop that’s snatched away by the wind, and burrows his face behind her nearest spine-ridge until they level off.

They’re very, very high up, he notices. The sky above is clear, and the clouds are at least two hundred feet below. “Do we really need to be this far?” he asks, a little nervous. He thinks she’d catch him. Probably.

_::Maybe,::_ Noci says, though she sounds restless. _::I do not wish to take a risk; the only things that can reach us up here are other dragons or-- ::_

“Or what?”

_::Nothing you need to know about right now.::_

Shadow makes a dissatisfied noise. “Okay, but tell me about the demons and why you freaked out.”

Noci is silent for a long moment, floating along under the crescent moon, and Shadow tilts his entire body back until he’s lying prone against her scales. She finally says _::There are many forms of demon. Some of them are small; you humans call them Poes, Redead, Gibdos, Stalfos. There are bigger ones; we do not speak their name to avoid calling their attention. And then there is He Who Waits, the largest of them all, whose gaze is unavoidably fixed in our direction.::_

_“_ That’s…that’s not creepy at all, thanks. I definitely needed more reasons not to sleep.”

_::He cannot touch us unless he finds a way through into this world from his place at the edge of all things. You are as safe as you can be from his direct intervention; though you would be safer if you bonded with me.::_

_“_ Why?” Shadow asks, suspicious.

_::Because then my strength is as yours,:: she says. ::My mind is yours, my thoughts shield yours. Between the two of us, nothing shall bring you harm.::_

Shadow sits up at that and wobbles, almost falling of her back. “Look, Noci, I get it; you want me to bond with you,” he says. “But—monsters and mayhem and magic, none of this feels real.”

She snarls beneath him. _::I will show you_ **_real,_ ** _you empty-shelled hatchbrain,::_ she snaps, and tilts herself downwards. Shadow shrieks as he starts lifting off of her neck, scrabbling for the rope; he catches it just in time, slamming himself down hard enough on her neck that he knows he’ll have bruises on the insides of his thighs tomorrow.

She arrows down towards earth faster than she’s ever flown with him; the speed of the wind flying past brings tears to his eyes and he squints them shut, ducking behind her nearest spine-ridge to block as much of the air as he can. It’s not very helpful; he still feels the skin of his face pulling back as she tilts even further, and even with the rope it’s a hell of a struggle trying to stay solidly on her back.

It feels like ages that they’re in this drawn-out dive. Noci finally levels out with a strenuous flap of her wings, pulling into a wide, looping turn. Shadow sneaks a peek, trying to figure out where they are, but it’s still too fast; the wind is strong enough that he can barely see anything. “The fuck are you doing!?” he howls into the wind, but his words are snatched away before he even hears them, leaving him wondering if he’s even said anything at all.

He keeps his eyes shut until Noci lands on the ground, a graceless jolt turning into a rambling lope as she bleeds off speed. _::We are here,::_ she says, voice cooler than he has ever heard. He wonders if she’s really mad at him. It feels like it; she’s brought him out here to this mystery place in the middle of nowhere.

He opens his eyes.

They’re in a forest, he can tell that much, though they’re standing in a clearing big enough for five or six Nocis to stand comfortably without jostling each other. Half of that clearing is taken up by a jumble of stone, both natural and worked; he sees broken statues and shattered pillars in the mess. “Where are we?” he asks.

_::This is a smeretzem,::_ says Noci, clearly angry. _::A death-ground, a battleground of monsters and men for ages upon ages; the place where heroes come to lay down their lives and die. Get down from my back.::_

Shadow does, a little shaky. This is a new side of Noci, one he’s never seen before, and honestly he’s kind of scared. She could just wing away and leave him out here to die.

But once he hits the ground he understands why she wants him down.

The ground is soggy, almost spongy, and the air is bitter and thick with a scent he can’t place and doesn’t enjoy at all. It looks like there’s bodies lining the edges of the clearings; when he steps closer he sees that there _are_ bodies lining the edges of the clearings.

None of them are human.

At least three of them are outsized, gross, knobbly looking things, their piggish faces slack in death. Two of them have clubs beside them, clubs no human could possibly have lifted; the rest of them have crudely carved wooden swords. “The fuck is this?” Shadow asks, only hearing the horror in his voice once the words are spoken.

_::Your kind calls them ‘bokoblins,’::_ Noci says. _::They are dark and twisted things, though weak. Mainly used for shock troops, thrown away like old bones, though they breed fast enough to make up for it. This smeretzem is near a nest of them; they swarm the area, and other bonded push them back time and time again. They are too stupid to stay away, too stupid to move on. The last push back was no more than two days ago; I overflew it as it was happening.::_

Shadow is interested despite himself. “Did you know them?”

_::No. They were Light.::_

“Wh- light what?”

_::Light flight, little idiot. Did you think all dragons looked like me?::_

Before Shadow can answer, there’s a rustle from the bushes.

Noci’s head snaps towards the sound, fangs bared, and Shadow, already tense, skitters back towards her side. “What was that,” he says, “I thought you said there weren’t any—“

A rabbit hops out of the bushes.

Noci doesn’t move, but Shadow can feel every ounce of tension melt out of her frame. He feels more than sees her tail, hovering a handspan off the ground, thump back to solid earth. _::A snack,::_ she says, sounding disgusted with herself. _::Nothing more.::_

She stretches her wings, shakes them out to re-settle them the way a human would shrug.

Before she can refold them, three spears cast from the bushes rip wide, bloody gashes into them.

Noci roars in shock as they hit and turns, her tail sweeping towards where the spear had come from, but it’s like a flood of Bokoblins is unleashed, running rampant through the clearing, casting more spears, some towards Shadow. He shrieks as one of them hurtles towards him but Noci raises her tail; it embeds itself in her tailfin and she yowls, sweeping it back and tossing the spear-thrower into the nearest tree. “I’m sorry!!” Shadow yells desperately, running back towards the protective sheltering of her bulk. “Noci, what do we do??”

_::There are too many of them for me,::_ Noci admits, all the while clearing vast swathes with her tail and biting down on others, throwing them into her enemies. _::I need your help, or we will not get out of this alive.::_

“What can I do against _this?!”_ Shadow shrieks, finally somewhat safe in the lee of her neck. She turns to him, eyes blazing red, jaws flecked with blood.

_::I need you to bond with me.::_

_“Noci I swear to fuck if this was some sort of plan all along—“_

_::Idiot fool of a hatchling,_ **_cease!!!_ ** _::_ Noci says, and roars. The approaching swarm hesitates, obviously not used to facing down someone in such a furor. _::I cannot fly with my wings pierced! If I cannot fly,_ **_you_ ** _cannot escape!::_

“Fine!” Shadow shouts, angry and terrified enough to wet his pants. “What do you want me to do?!”

Her head drops back down to his level—she looks him square in the eye and then opens her mouth. _::There is no time to do this correctly; I will have to secure the tether later, but for now all we need is this. Cut your palm on my teeth.::_

_“Wh—“_

_::Do not argue with me if you want to live! We need the magic only you can provide to survive, and we need it now!::_

**_“What magic?!”_** Shadow howls as he thrusts his hand between two dagger-sharp teeth and pushes. The pain is instant and fierce; he jerks his hand back, but not before the blood starts welling up. Noci turns to face him fully, her tongue snaking out.

_::Hold out your palm,::_ she says, seemingly ignoring the Bokoblins massing behind her. Shadow does so, and she laps the palmful of blood as delicately as if she was a tenth of her size.

All of a sudden it’s like someone punched him in the stomach. All his air is gone, and so is the world in front of him, it feels like there’s nothing left in the universe but himself and something huge, something rushing towards him, closing in on him—

And then something yanks.

He falls back into himself, but someone’s there with him, a solid presence, and all of a sudden the world snaps back into focus, the Bokoblins letting out shrill cries as they charge, Noci hissing like a teakettle, and he feels her pull on something inside him, something he doesn’t have words for, something he might never have words for, and suddenly his palms are wreathed in shadows.

_::Point your hands at them,:: s_ he snarls. Feeling like he’s in a dream, he does.

The shadows burst forward, covering the horde, and Noci beats her wings once, fanning it wider and higher until they’re all completely obscured. She hisses and snaps her jaw; there’s a single burst of terrified screaming, and then the shadows collapse.

All of the Bokoblins are gone.

Shadow stares at his hands, still dripping darkness onto the ground beneath, and looks up at Noci bewilderedly. “Where did they go?” he asks, and starts shaking.

_::Between,::_ Noci says shortly, and tucks her head down to look at him.Shadow can see the dents in the finer scales around her eyes and muzzle. _::They will not be back to trouble us again.::_

She snorts, and when the air blows past his hands it dissipates the darkness still clinging to them, making it fall away in shreds and scraps to wriggle disturbingly on the ground. Shadow takes a few steps away from it, uncomfortable.

This….this is goddamn ridiculous.

“This is goddamn ridiculous,” he says, hardly taking note of how high and shrill his voice sounds. “I just—I just murdered a shit-ton of weird monsters. They were throwing _spears_ at me.”

_::You did not murder them. They may still be alive,::_ Noci says, sounding diffident at best. _::It would be best not to attempt to find them, though. We have more pressing things to worry about.::_

“Like _what?!”_ Shadow keens, turning as if to run away from everything that’s just happened, but suddenly Noci is _there,_ her great head in front of him, her neck curved around him, her wings mantling him until all he can feel is _her._

And she’s _inside_ , too, heavy in that spot where he’s always tasted her laughter before, but more _present;_ he feels where she comes from, too, a long, thick tether stretching into nothingness and reaching her. He feels her battle-lust, her joy at a fight well fought (though not by anything he’d call well-fought), and her pain.

Her _pain._

She’s still _injured._

Shadow feels like the hugest dick in the world.

“Shit,” he says, and presses his palms to her face, grabs her head and tries to hug her as hard as he can while he shakes. He might cry. If he does, that’s between himself and her, and her low croon soothes him down to his bones.

When he’s finished, she pulls back a bit, looking him over with a critical eye. _::You are uninjured,::_ she says, sounding pleased.

Shadow holds up the hand she had bitten, intending to use that as a “no I’m not” but freezes when he sees that the palm-wide cut is now a shallow silver scar. It really brings the fact back to him that he now has a _dragon_ inside of his head. And that he now resides partly inside of a _dragon’s_ head, too. That he just used magic to, whatever Noci says, kill a bunch of sentient things.

And that deep down somewhere inside he liked it.

Noci doesn’t make him talk about it, though. She just instructs him on how to fill his hands with shadows again, these ones feeling somehow less vicious, more tender, and how to pour them over her wounds. He scrabbles all over her back, finding dented scales and bruised hide, practicing before the three major wounds in her wingsail. They have to be perfect; ragged wingsail makes for incredibly difficult flight.

But when he pulls his hands away from the membrane, deeply exhausted, he sees nothing but perfect skin.

It’s a slog to pull himself back into the hollow between her wings, to tuck his arms and legs into the rough-woven collar, but he does. And if he falls asleep while Noci is gliding high above the clouds, well.

The lullaby she croons to him is impossible to resist. What else is he supposed to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Shadow lives in an abusive household with his uncle, who smacks him around non-explicitly once in this chapter. If you want to skip this, move from "and...advancing on Shadow" to "what he promised".


	5. Vio, Summer, 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i'm not dead (or maybe i am but only on the inside) have more drau

Summer comes, as it always does, and this time Vio is more than ready for it. His third summer as Priesm’s bonded, his third summer slipping past his parents’ negligent watch- and he’s sixteen now, they trust him more than they ever have, to the point that they leave him for two weeks to celebrate their anniversary in Termina. Priesm takes that time very seriously- they set up wards around his house and disappear into the brush as easily as they have for years now.

Over the winter monsters have been creeping towards the city reaches. Vio took his first sentient life months ago, as the snowmelt soaked the ground and made footing slippery, uncomfortable. His opponent—a stray Bokoblin scout— had no time to react, not with Vio’s enhanced speed and reflexes. Its head had separated from its body with barely a stretch of effort on Vio’s behalf.

He didn’t even get any of its blood on his makeshift armor, bartered and borrowed from other bonded in return for services rendered or favors owed.

Priesm had congratulated him, but it hadn’t felt like something to be congratulated on. It had felt simple, easy.

Too easy.

He hadn’t enjoyed it, had grimaced at the thick, dark blood staining his pristine sword, had tried his hardest not to look at the body lying on the ground, a body that had been moving and breathing not half a minute before.

_ ::Do not doubt,:: _ Priesm had told him, gentle but firm.  _ ::There is always another one. They will always be coming. You have done your duty, and will continue to as best you can.:: _

He hadn’t wanted to ask if there was another way Priesm had caught the thought anyway.  _ ::If they catch you, they will kill you,:: _ ie had said, still gentle, still firm.  _ ::They will show no mercy. They are anathema to light and life.:: _

Over time, it had gotten easier.

He no longer flinched at the feel of his sword separating flesh, hardly ever gagged at the scent of blood. He took the air from their lungs so he would not have to hear them scream, and Priesm hummed warm reassurance in his mind every time.

It’s hard work, taxing both physically and mentally, but it is necessary, and so Vio does what has to be done. 

 

Priesm has him up in the mountains eradicating a bokoblin nest when he feels a tingle of – not quite surprise, not quite amusement—radiating from his bonded strong enough to make him lose focus. He takes a nasty swipe to the side, shearing right through his makeshift leather armor like butter—this bokoblin must have picked up an actual sword from somewhere, an oversight he regrets missing. He feels Priesm’s focus flickering over him and damps down his pain as much as he can, an odd sort of pride making his teeth grit, and Priesm’s heavy touch lightens, acknowledging that Vio can continue.

He barely notices his bonded moving farther up the mountain.

~~*~~*~~*~~

“The hell are we doing out here Noci,” Shadow mumbles through a mouth full of peanut butter and potato chip sandwich, tucked into the groove of Noci’s neck. “It’s barely morning, you had me out all night, I could be  _ sleeping, _ you made me leave without  _ coffee— _ “

_ ::Shut up,:: _ Noci says not ungently, her neck held low and stiff as she minces through the forest. Shadow can barely see the trees outside of their shadow-cocoon that he’s maintaining, holding it thick around Noci’s feet to mask her steps (because no matter how lightly she treads, the fact remains that she is a  _ motherfucking sixty-foot-long dragon. _ He has no clue how much she weighs, but it’s enough. More than enough.)  _ ::We are almost—ah.:: _

“Ah?” He sits up straight, brushing the crumbs off his chest. Her voice had changed, and he had no clue how to parse the direction it had gone. “What? What is it?”

Instead of answering, she  _ hunkers. _ She crouches down on all fours, drawing her tail in tight to her body and lowering her chin till it rests on the forest floor. Her wings rustle unnervingly behind him.  _ ::Pull the shadows tighter,:: _ she instructs.  _ ::Now, as you value your thin hide.:: _

He does so, feeling a bead of sweat run down his neck with the exertion. It feels like the air is absolutely still, despite the fact that there’d been a healthy breeze not a quarter mile upslope. “What’s wrong? I thought we were gonna barrel right into the bokoblin nest—“

_ ::Plans have changed,::  _ she says shortly, and only then does Shadow hear the sounds of combat.

Holy shit.

Holy  _ shit, _ someone got there  _ before  _ him.

He drops the remains of the sandwich over Noci’s side and starts squirming up her neck as fast as he can. “Is there another bonded pair up there?!” he hisses, hooking his arms around one of her wide-spread crest horns and leaning as far as he can.

_ ::Yes.:: _ Noci’s voice is unusually quiet, as if she’s trying her best not to draw attention to herself.

“Why don’t we go help?!”

_ ::Walking in on them may well spell your death or mine.:: _

“What, against a bunch of bokoblins?” Shadow scoffs, but Noci stiffens even further, angling her head back far enough that he slides down to her shoulders again.

_ ::Stay,:: _ she hisses vehemently.  _ ::Stay down there or I will pin you to the ground beneath my hind foot. Do not say anything.:: _

Startled, Shadow obeys, though he does hook his knee around her wing joint to lean over the side, trying to see what Noci is staring at.

There’s—there’s another dragon coming up the hill.

It’s so  _ small. _

“Noci,” he says uneasily. “Noci, that dragon is half your size. Why aren’t you—“

_ ::Because ie would have my skull,:: _ she mutters, shifting sideways so that Shadow is on the lee side, her massive bulk between him and the approaching dragon.

Hell with that. Shadow’s never seen another dragon in person, and he’s sure as hell not gonna miss out on the opportunity now. Before Noci can protest he’s back in the groove of her neck, tucking himself into his harness strap, and she does nothing but rumble low in her throat.

With her neck so low he has an excellent vantage point to watch the dragon approach. It doesn’t have to force itself through the underbrush like Noci does; the trees almost seem to sway aside as it passes. Shadow can’t hear it coming at all. He thinks that if he was standing on the ground he wouldn’t have been able to  _ feel  _ it, either.

A sudden gust of wind makes him shiver.

_ ::Peace,:: _ says an unfamiliar voice, cold as the north wind and dry as dust, heavy in a way Shadow can’t really understand. It’s  _ so weird _ to hear something in the place only Noci has ever been. The silver dragon stops well downslope, its head tilted. Farther, Shadow can barely make out movement through the trees, quick and fluid, the sound of sword upon club and the sound of screaming and the sound of silence.  _ ::No harm to you, young one.:: _

Shadow can  _ feel _ how difficult it is for Noci to hold her tongue.  _ ::Peace,:: _ she says back, the words carrying the weight of ritual, but she doesn’t uncurve her neck from its kinked position. She’s still protecting Shadow.  _ ::Our apologies. We had overflown this nest but yesterday. If I had been aware you had claimed it--:: _

_ ::So I saw,:: _ the silver dragon says, sounding outwardly agreeable, but something about those three words makes the hair on Shadow’s neck raise into goosebumps.  _ ::Congratulations appear to be in order.:: _

_ ::Appreciated,::  _ Noci says, or projects, or  _ something; _ Shadow can’t really parse it, just feels the feeling flow over him undercut with nerves and—anger?

_ ::A word of advice,:: _ the silver dragon adds, so nonchalant it makes Shadow grit his teeth.  _ ::Refine your technique. Even rats like these can see a dragon-shaped patch of void and realize something is amiss.:: _

Refine?! Shadow thought he’d been doing pretty damn well!

_ ::Instruct your bondmate before he gets you killed. You are young and have much potential,::  _ the dragon says, or projects—says, whatever, it’s not like Shadow is some sort of draconic language expert, fuck, all he’s getting is an endless feeling of  _ better-than-you, _ of  _ not-good-enough _ , and he is  _ done _ with that.

“Hey, fuck you!” he snaps before he can help himself. “I’d like to see yours do any better!”

Noci hisses, half in shock, half in agreement, and Shadow suddenly gets the feeling the silver dragon is  _  laughing _ at them. And not in a nice way, either.  _ ::If you have been looking at all, you would have,:: _ it says, protective and smug.  _ ::If you will excuse me.:: _

It turns and walks away, down to the clearing where nothing but silence is coming from, and still Noci hunkers.

“What the fuck!” he finally says. “Noci, what the actual fuck—you’re just gonna sit there and let it say that?! You’re twice its size, you could crush it—“

_ ::That dragon is possibly the oldest living creature on the planet,:: _ Noci says very quietly, though he can feel her sides heaving with quiet irritation.  _ ::There is very little I could do to iem that ie could not predict and retaliate first. Ie is possibly older than the  _ **_sky_ ** _.:: _

“So?!” Shadow snaps, the fire in his belly filling his mind. “Just makes it—iem? Just makes iem all that slower and more brittle! Noci, you could take iem—“

_ ::I could  _ **_not,_ ** _ hatchling,:: _ she snaps back, biting at the air in front of her and turning her bulk, lashing her tail in frustration. A few trees go down under the outburst.  _ ::Nor could you take ies bonded, likely. The Skyblade is not one to be trifled with.:: _

“The  _ Skyblade?! _ ” Shadow says, ripe with derision as Noci trots uphill. “Big name for a little….thing.”

_ ::Hold your prattling tongue until we are in the air if you wish it to remain housed in your skull!:: _ Noci hisses vehemently.  _ ::Do not taunt the Wind flight, idiot bonded, lest you wish to find them in front of you with claw and fang extended!:: _

“We could escape,” Shadow mutters, though quietly. “We could slip through the shadows, there’s enough of them—“

_ ::Not enough to fit me in my entirety, and I do not wish to travel in pieces.:: _

Shadow stills at that, though not without a few more muttered insults under his breath. He turns to look down the hill again, curious beside himself as to what the other bonded looks like. “Do you think they’re old?” He asks, squinting, but they’re far enough away that all he can catch is motion. “Like, old-old. Middle aged. Probably, with a stick-in-the-mud like that dragon—“

Without warning the dragon in question bursts into the air, a sinuous silver streak with a monstrous wingspan spiraling dizzily upwards. Shadow just barely manages to catch a flash of blond hair and purple clothing—purple clothes, who even wears purple  _ anything _ nowadays—

_ ::Your hair is purple,:: _ Noci points out with infuriating smugness.  _ ::And sometimes so is your skin.:: _

“How bout you shut up,” Shadow mumbles, touching his latest bruise. “I look good in purple. Did you see—“

_ ::So nosy,:: _ Noci rumbles beneath him, sounding like she approves.  _ ::Yes. Ies bonded did not look much older than you, if at all.:: _

“Huh.”

_ ::Likely because the Skyblade did not bond until eight seasons ago. Before I met you, but not by much. You should have let me in sooner,:: _ she grumps.  _ ::I could have bested the Skyblade at  _ **_something_ ** _ then.:: _

She takes off before he can reply.

~**~**~**~

The wound across his ribs, while shallow, is worse than he thinks it is.

Vio spends two hours that feel like an eternity cleaning stray fragments of shirt out of it, light-headed and nauseous at the sight of the inside of his own skin. He can’t see bone, thank every goddess, but the blood runs freely from it, soaking into his jeans. He’s going to need to  _ burn _ them. His phone is a complete loss, battered and bloody, the screen shattered. He has no clue how he’s going to explain his loss to his parents.

Priesm is heavy in his head every step of the way, dulling and numbing what ie can. There’s only so much ie can do without removing Vio’s ability to work; Vio has to push him out when it comes to layering the butterfly bandages over the edges of the wound and pulling them together.

He’s clammy and shaking by the end, stomach roiling. He barely makes it past Priesm’s talons before he empties himself.

_ ::You did well,:: _ Priesm says,  _ thrumming _ low in ies throat when Vio returns.  _ ::Many who came before you have not fared as well facing their first serious injury.:: _

Vio coughs, reaching tenderly for his water bottle to rinse the sour taste out of his mouth. “I am hoping this will be my last. I should have been watching my shield.”

_ ::Yes. You were too high for an enemy on your downslope. Lesson learned.:: _

“Lesson learned.” He swishes and spits, hissing as even that motion pains him. “Are we done for the day?”

Priesm curves ies head around, nudging Vio’s face with the utmost delicacy.  _ ::Yes, and likely for the week. You will need time to heal. You are so fragile still, though getting better. Perhaps in a few years I will have shed enough scales to make you proper armor.:: _

“Seems a little….macabre,” Vio grunts, easing himself up Priesm’s proffered forelimb to his seat. “Is that common practice?”

_ ::Of course. How else would a dragon best protect its bonded?::  _ Priesm’s voice holds humor as ie takes off,  _ thrumming _ again at Vio’s involuntary whimper of pain.  _ ::Rest easy, bonded. We are not far.:: _

It is not a fun ride. It’s not a fun climb up the stairs to his room, either, and it’s not a fun process to bend down and grab the advanced first aid kit under the sink, plastering gauze pads haphazardly over his shaky line of butterfly bandages before swallowing three ibuprofen. When he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he looks haggard and pale.

If his mother asks, he can probably foist it off as summer flu. She’ll cluck and bring him soup and popsicles, and she won’t question why he hobbles everywhere.

How has it gotten so easy to make excuses? It’s something that gives him pause, adds a little mental discomfort to his already heavy physical discomfort.

_ ::Put it aside, beloved,::  _ Priesm urges from outside,  _ ::and lay yourself down. You deserve to rest. You have had a long day.:: _

“I have,” he murmurs, and finishes scrubbing the blood from underneath his nails.

~**~**~**~

“You’re sure?” Shadow hisses under his breath. Noci makes a little noise of disgust in the back of his mind and doesn’t deign to reply.

It’s possible he might be going a little overboard.

It’s  _ possible _ he might be a little obsessed.

But Noci won’t even  _ think _ about going and taking that other dragon down, not even after it  _ insulted _ them, and so Shadow needs the next-best thing.

He needs to take down its bonded a few pegs.

He’s made Noci fly him here and there over the past few weeks, looking for some sign,  _ any _ sign, yelling at Noci when she shies away from one area or another for too long. He thinks she knows  _ exactly _ where they are- and he’s probably right, because she never answers him when he demands, just swerves one way or another or does a loop that makes him almost fall out of his seat.

Until today, that is, when she woke him up at the asscrack of dawn (okay, like, 10:30, but he’s pretty much nocturnal at this point, shut up) hissing  _ ::If you truly wish to go through with this, now is your chance.:: _

But… at a bookstore?

(Which reminds him, he should probably look into getting the books he’ll need for school this year.)

(Eh, fuck it. He’ll dig something shiny out of Noci’s stash and pawn it in a week or two. He’s got time.)

All he knows about this person is that they’re around his age, blond, wear purple, and ride a fucking dragon. He has no clue how he’s going to pick them out of a crowd, and he’s guessing shouting “HEY, YOU DRAGONFUCKER, COME FIGHT ME” isn’t the best idea for once.

At least the bookstore isn’t too crowded at this time of day. It’s mostly middle-aged moms and college kids; Shadow dismisses the first and looks closely at the second, but none of them are blond or wearing purple.

(He’s aware that the Bonded might not be wearing purple today. He’s choosing to ignore that fact. Besides, it’s all in his head anyway, no one can hear him.)

(Except Noci. And she’s laughing at him. Like always.)

(Whatever, Noci. Shut up.)

He turns a corner and almost runs face-first into someone, knocking the stack of books out of their hands.

“Shit, sorry,” he mumbles under the throb of Noci’s cackle in the back of his head, immediately bending to pick them up. “Head in the clouds, y’know.”

“Yes,” says the other person with what sounds like a smile in their voice, and Shadow peeks up through his bangs.

Young.

Blond.

Wearing purple.

_ Unfortunately attractive!!!!! _

_ ::That is him!:: _ Noci says, still laughing at him.  _ ::If you are to make your move--:: _

Shadow rises slowly, sizing the blond up as he does. They’re of a height; Shadow might be a hair taller, but the other dude definitely has broader shoulders. He holds himself stiffly, brows furrowing over icy blue eyes the longer Shadow holds his books hostage.

He flicks his eyes down quickly to check the titles. A few of them look familiar; he’ll have to double check his required reading list. A few of them don’t. What the hell is “The Art of War?”

“Um,” says the blond, eloquently, and reaches out a hand. “My books, please?”

Shadow abruptly realizes that he has  _ no _ idea what to say.

He’d planned for some sort of epic confrontation, landing in front of him and launching off of Noci’s back, waving his dagger or baseball bat or whatever he’d decided to pick up and challenging him to a duel, but there’s people around and he’s pretty sure someone would call the cops if he pulled out a knife right now.

He could say  _ so many things. _ Like, “I challenge you, fair opponent!” or “Meet me in the Denny’s parking lot in 30 minutes for an ass-kicking” or “Why do you have to be hot, now I feel bad.”

Probably not that last one.

Instead he opens his mouth and says “Tell your dragon that you’re sparring me at the junction of Lake Hylia and Zora River at sundown.”

Nice. Concise, he didn’t trip over his tongue or anything.

So why the hell is this guy staring at him like he’s got shit on his shoe?

He’s not unreadable. Shadow saw his brows twitch when he said “dragon.” When he looks closer, he can see the guy’s hair is sun-bleached to an almost ridiculous degree—too bad the platinum blond looks so good on him. “Well?” he insists, a little more aggressively than he’d meant to, shoving the books into the dude’s stomach.

He winces and flinches back, grabbing the books almost viciously. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he says after a moment, cool and icy. “If you will excuse me—“

“The hell you don’t, and the hell I will.” Shadow steps in front of him again when he tries to move around, getting right into his face, taking spiteful delight in the way the furrow between his brow deepens.

Getting on people’s nerves is Shadow’s  _ best trait. _

“Your fucking windbag insulted me and mine to our faces,” he adds, lowering his voice when one of the soccer moms peers at them from the far end of the row. “I demand satisfaction. Or do you want us to fly high and far yelling about how the  _ Skyblade _ is a  _ coward? _ ”

The guy’s face goes all funny and screwed up for a second, eyes glazing over. If Shadow hadn’t been absolutely sure this guy was a Dragonbonded before he would be now—he’s made that face talking to Noci in his head a bunch. When his eyes clear and focus back onto Shadow—

And holy shit do they  _ focus.  _ It’s clear that whatever conversation they’d been having before this guy was nowhere near paying attention. Having those icy eyes fixed on him like lasers…the weight of his gaze feels heavy, and Shadow takes a step backwards before he can help himself.

When he realizes what he’s done he grits his teeth and squares his shoulders and steps right back up, but the damage is already done. He’s already backed down, and the duel hasn’t even  _ happened  _ yet. “Well?” he spits, infuriated, defensive. “Or are you scared of a real bonded pair?”

The guy  _ laughs. _

It’s not a nice laugh, and it stops almost as soon as it starts, and those blue eyes lose their focus on him. “Do I  _ look _ like I have any need to be scared of you?” he asks, the tone outwardly polite but dripping with concealed scorn. Shadow, almost uncontrollably, takes in the line of his shoulders again, the way the fabric of his sleeves press against his biceps, the toned forearms.

The utter  _ unconcern _ he has, facing a challenge from a Dragonbonded.

Shadow sees  _ red. _

“Fuck you,” he hisses, taking the step closer that puts his face only a few inches away from the other dude’s. “You don’t get to talk to me like that. I’m  _ done _ with condescension. I’m  _ done _ with being looked down on. You meet us at the lake, or we’re going to come find you and  _ take you down _ .”

He whirls and stalks out before the other guy can react.

_ ::You handled that well,:: _ Noci says in his mind, but the way she’s laughing makes him clench his teeth even harder.

_ ::I’m gonna handle  _ **_him_ ** _ well. By kicking his ass from the shore to the  _ **_shrine_ ** _ in the middle of the lake.:: _

_ ::I look forward to watching. Though perhaps,:: _ she suggests with unusual delicacy,  _ ::you will want a better weapon.:: _

***

He honestly wasn’t expecting them to show.

Shadow’s been waiting at the lake since late afternoon. He has his handy baseball bat; he has the rudimentary magic that Noci’s been teaching him on and off, and the shadows are long and deep enough at this time of day that he won’t be using more energy than it’s worth trying to connect with them.

Noci told him that this place has been used as a dueling ground before, and he can see why. It’s a nice flat stretch of turf, the lake on one side to the east, the forest on the other to the west. No rocks to mess up footing. The sun is already behind the treetops, so neither of them will have to worry about the glare.

Even so, he doesn’t notice them approach until Noci stiffens beside him.

Shadow looks up just in time to catch the silver dragon eeling ies way out of the dark forest like mercury. Ies steps are silent; they don’t make the ground tremble at all. It’s like ies made of air or something.

He doesn’t catch a glimpse of the other rider until he’s sliding down from his harness. It’s clear why after a moment—he’s wearing some sort of pale armor that almost blends in with his dragon’s scales.

The silver stops about two dragonlengths away—two of Noci’s dragonlengths, anyway, probably four of the others—letting ies rider close the distance between them. As he gets closer Shadow sees the armor is just padding, light gray, with clusters of tiny gleaming silver scales at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees.

He almost sees red again. Stupid pretentious shiny fucker. Who the fuck does he think he is? Coming to a duel dressed in  _ that _ , while Shadow slums it in his oversized hoodie and ripped jeans. Next thing’ll be that he brought a sword to a bat fight.

The guy turns the slightest bit, and Shadow catches sight of a hilt rising above his shoulder.

Scratch that. He  _ absolutely  _ brought a sword to a bat fight.

Mother  _ fucker. _

_ ::You did not mention which weapons would be acceptable,:: _ Noci points out, her head pointedly tilted away from him.  _ ::And you will not let me find you a sword.:: _

“You didn’t tell me it’d be a swordy-type fight!” he hisses at her, digging his heels into the turf and feeling the shadows threaded through his fingers wriggling eagerly. “I thought it’d be a fistfight or something!”

_ ::And you brought a bat to a fistfight?:: _

“I wasn’t thinking!”

“That much is clear,” says the guy, still twenty feet away—holy fuck, there’s  _ no way _ he could’ve heard him from that far back, what the hell?! “Your weapon of choice is a little…”

“Shut up,” Shadow snaps, flinging himself forward until he’s right in front of the guy. “Eavesdrop much?”

“Always.” His voice is bone-dry, his gaze laconic, nothing like the intent focus of the morning. “Can we get this over with? I have things to do. Things that do not involve a farce like this.”

“A  _ what? _ What does that even mean?!” Shadow says, and immediately regrets it. The guy raises an eyebrow, and his dragon huffs, and oh, that’s  _ it. _ “Look, fuck you! We’ve done jack shit to you and all you’ve done is stand there and insult us!”

The other eyebrow raises. “Frankly, I find that impossible.”

“Frankly,” Shadow mocks, voice high and whiny, “you should probably tell your dragon to take the stick out of ies ass.”

Now  _ that _ gets a reaction. If thunderclouds had faces, the guy in front of him would be their poster child. He looks like he’s about to start spitting electricity. “I have no idea who you are,” he says, forcedly calm, though Shadow can hear the tension in his voice and revels in it. “I have no idea what you want—“

“Oh, I think I’ve made myself pretty clear,” Shadow says without hesitation.

“A childish fight over an imagined argument?”

“An  _ apology  _ for being an  _ asshole! _ ”

“You are such a  _ baby, _ ” the guy breathes in utter disbelief. “A  _ child. _ ”

“I’m as old as you are!”

“You certainly are not acting like it.”

“Get fucked!” Shadow shrieks, pulling the glove he’d snagged from his dresser drawer out of his back pocket and hurling it at the ground between them. “A formal challenge, fuckface, and if you back out of it I’ll tell everyone from here to the highest reaches that the bonded of the Skyblade  _ flaked out!” _

The other guy’s eyes turn to ice. Shadow’s words hang in the air between them, all but visible. He’s all but shaking, taking heaving breaths to calm himself back down, but the adrenaline in his veins keeps him hyped up, eager to lean forward and use the shadows still writhing between the fingers of his clenched fists.

“Fine,” the guy says abruptly, sharp as a slamming door. “If it will get you off our backs--  _ fine. _ A duel to first blood.”

“Fine!” Shadow blurts right back, and Noci groans behind him, thumping her head to the ground hard enough for him to feel it. “So--”

“Ten minutes to prepare.” The guy turns on his heel and walks back to his dragon, leaving Shadow standing there mid-word. He closes his hanging jaw, opens it as if to yell something, and then spins around and stomps back to Noci’s side.

_ ::To first blood? You agreed to first blood?:: _ she asks him, aggrieved.  _ ::Your weapon is  _ **_blunt force,_ ** _ idiot hatchling.:: _

“I-- i could--” Shadow says, tripping over his words. Now that he has what he wants, now that he has this guy’s complete attention, he’s sorta at a loss, feeling like he’s gotten in way over his head. For all that he wants to prove himself, he’s nowhere near this guy’s level. “There’s always punching him in his stupid pretty nose,” he finishes, though his voice is a lot weaker than it was at the start. “God, Noci, did I really just--”

_ ::Yes, and now you have to see it through,:: _ she tells him decisively.  _ ::I will not be known as the dragon with the bondmate who challenged the Skyblade and then ran.:: _

Shadow is an  _ idiot. _ He knows this. He’s well aware of this fact. But it’s never seemed so real as it has now, as Noci shoves him forward with her snout, as the other dragonrider walks towards him with his blade bared.

When Shadow is close enough, the other guy stops. “In deference to your...weapon of choice,” he says, and Shadow can hear the sneer beneath his words, “I have dulled my blade. Feel for yourself.” He stretches it out point-first between them and Shadow begrudgingly runs his fingers along the gleaming surface. True to his word, there’s a pressure about a quarter-inch above the entire surface that turns it from a shiny slashy thing to a shiny beaty thing.

“I don’t need a handicap,” Shadow grumbles, but it’s rote by now. “So. First blood?”

“First blood. Anything goes, though if Priesm believes things are getting out of hand ie will stop the match.”

_ ::The same for I,:: _ Noci rumbles, though her head is still pillowed on the ground, pointedly away from the proceedings.  _ ::Do not take this as an opportunity to vent your aggression on my bonded.:: _

“Understood,” the guy says with a deferential head tilt. He slides his foot back until he’s barely angled towards Shadow, his blade coming up to rest mid-air between them. “En garde.”

“Eat shit,” Shadow snaps, and lunges.

From the first motion, he knows this is a fight he’s not going to enjoy.

This is nothing like fighting bokoblins in the forest. They’re slow, stupid things, and Noci’s usually stunned them with shadows or blows from her tail first, sorta like how a cat will bring home lamed prey for its kittens. It’s not a metaphor Shadow likes to think about often, but it springs to his mind now.

He’s a house-kitten fighting a lynx.

The guy never stands still. Every time Shadow lunges, he’s a half-turn away, a half-step ahead or behind or to the side of where he’s supposed to be. His sword is barely a silver streak in the afternoon light, spinning in arcs and circles, brushing Shadow’s bat off like it’s nothing but a nuisance. When Shadow feints at his knees, the guy  _ jumps over his head _ and plants a foot in the small of Shadow’s back, sending him staggering, barely able to catch himself on hands and knees before he faceplants into the grass.

“Do you yield?” The guy asks as Shadow swears and picks himself up. He sounds curious, and Shadow snarls as he whips around to face him. “There is no way you are going to win this.”

“How bout you shut your  _ fucking _ mouth and  _ fight! _ ” Shadow growls, and pulls on the bright-hot core of magic between himself and Noci.

The guy’s shadow stretches out and wraps itself around his foot, and Shadow hurtles himself forward, left fist ready and aimed to clock the living daylights out of this asshole.

Instead, the guy makes a quick, blurry gesture with his right hand, hisses something that makes Shadow wince, and backhands him halfway back to Noci with a glittery green energy-shield-thing that forms a split second before Shadow’s hit would have.

He lands hard, rolling over a few times. It  _ hurts _ , his shoulder’s gonna be a mass of bruises this time tomorrow, and he’s  _ fuming _ . “Cheap trick, asshole!” he hollers across the field as he drags himself to his feet. “Just stay put and let me fucking  _ hit _ you!!”

“Clever move,” the guy says, eyeing his leg with interest. It’s sunk at least six inches into the ground, seriously unbalancing him, and no matter how much he tugs it’s not moving. If Shadow was feeling really spiteful he’d slam the darkness shut like a maw, take his leg off at the calf. That’d count as first blood.

It’s a tempting option.

He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, smearing dirt and grass stains across his face.

_ Very _ tempting.

His hand twitches.

_ ::No,:: _ says Noci, very softly, and Shadow forcibly unclenches his fingers from the fist he was only half-aware he was making. His pulse is pounding in his temples and his throat; he’s never held someone in the shadows for this long  _ without _ slicing them in half, and the urge to just  _ do  _ it and end this stupid match is a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. His fingers still writhe with shadows, squirming half-formed between his fingers like blind, searching grubs.

He  _ could _ do it. He  _ could. _

_ :: _ **_No,_ ** _ :: _ says Noci a little more strongly. Across the field, the Skyblade fixates ies gaze on him and growls, high and silvery.

Shadow drops his bat in horror. 

What the fuck.

“What the  _ fuck, _ ” he whispers, and tries to shake the shadows from his hand.

They cling, stubborn, searching. One presses itself to the pale skin of his fingertip, rooting there like a maggot in a wound. He feels it shove at the nailbed, trying to flatten itself into the tiny gap of skin there. Others twine around his wrist, their free ends waving aimlessly in the air.

Shadow once saw a stray dog taking a shit in his driveway. When he went to go clean it up (under his uncle’s orders) it was studded with worms. Half of them were rooted into the shit, the other ends sticking out like the shadows on his arm are. Searching. Brainlessly searching.

Shadow is the shit in this metaphor, and he  _ doesn’t like it. _ “Noci?!” he croaks, high and breathless. This has never happened before. When he’s used the shadows, it’s been a one-and-done, a bite in the dark, not a sustained relentless tugging like--

The guy, half-forgotten, staggers to his knee with a grunt of pain. “This is not sporting,” he says, but Shadow barely registers his voice. “Either come over here and hit me or release me--”

Noci stands up, walks two steps, and takes his entire arm into her mouth.

The second she does, the guy wrenches his leg free and Shadow nearly whimpers with relief as the shadows let go of him, dissolving into darkness and dragon spit. It’s a relief that sinks deep into his gut, takes a weight away that he hadn’t registered was there in the first place.  _ ::Idiot,:: _ she tells him, fixing him with a glare.  _ ::What have I told you before?:: _

Before Shadow can answer, the silver dragon starts walking towards them.

Ie stops to help ies rider up-- and, shit, he’s limping, his pants leg is  _ shredded, _ and it looks like his calf was attacked by dozens of tiny mice or something-- and once the guy is slung across ies withers, ie moves forward again until ie’s barely an arm’s length away.

Noci lets out a teakettle whistle, high and shrill, though she can’t turn her head without taking Shadow’s arm off at the elbow.  _ ::Mind your place, Skyblade,:: _ she hisses, voice dark.

_ ::Mind yours,;: _ the Skyblade says, almost pleasantly.  _ ::Your bonded is strong but lacks control. You will need to rectify that if you have any hopes of keeping him alive.:: _

Shadow would argue, but he’s also the one that just about took a guy’s leg off in a duel to first blood, so he keeps his mouth shut and his head turned away. Noci’s mouth is a stiflingly moist cavern, slimy and hot and disgusting and  _ comforting. _ If his hand is in there, the shadows won’t come back and take it.

The guy lets out a soft huff. Shadow looks back up again, and--  _ oh. _

He’s shed the top half of his padded armor. Underneath he’s wearing nothing but a white tank top, and he’s  _ built. _ There’s a couple faint silvery scars around his forearms, barely visible against the deep tan. He’s sitting weirdly contorted, one leg braced against his dragon’s spine with the other stretched out along the wing joint as he splashes water along the bruises and micro-abrasions on his legs. On closer examination it looks like it’s been sandpapered, harder in some places than in others, and after a moment the guy just sighs and drains the rest of his water flask dry.

Shadow swallows too, watching the line of his throat. Stupid pretty dragonfucker.

“That was a neat party trick,” the guy says after he’s done, clipping the flask to his dragon’s harness. “Do you usually drop your combatants into a low-quality meat grinder?”

“Usually, yeah,” Shadow blurts before he can help himself.

The guy blinks.

And then he  _ grins. _ “Fair enough. You must not be fighting against truly sentient beings all that often, are you? It took me a while to refine my powers to spar against other riders as well. First blood, and the match, go to you.”

He’s... _ very _ good natured for someone who just lost a challenge match. A challenge match that, in all rights, he should have won.  _ Shadow _ certainly wouldn’t have been this well-mannered after eating shit like that.

Still, when the guy slips down from his dragon’s neck and stretches out his hand, Shadow takes it.

“Call me Vio,” the guy says with another there-and-gone flash of teeth. “I am certain we will be seeing more of each other in the future.”

“Uh. Yeah,” Shadow says, a little dumbfounded. “I’m Shadow.”

The guy--  _ Vio-- _ nods. “A word of advice, if I may?”

Shadow nods.

Vio tilts his head back, gaze sliding across the rapidly-dimming field, over to where Shadow’s baseball bat lies in splinters. “Get a better weapon if you’re planning on facing anything more powerful than a-- well. Anything, really.”

“Sure,” Shadow says, a little baffled, a little shell-shocked. “Bats are so last season anyway.” Noci cackles a little inside his head, and without looking he punches her. It does nothing besides scrape his knuckles, but it makes him feel better. “Hey, so, can I get your number?”

The words are out before he can really register what he’s doing, but once he does he feels himself blush all the way up to his ears.

Vio looks at him blankly, round-eyed, either baffled or disturbed. Shadow doesn’t know him well enough to sort out the nuances of  his expressions yet.

He thinks he’d really,  _ really _ like to, though.

“I, ah,” Vio says, sounding about as stilted as he looks, “no. Sorry.”

Inside his head, Noci cackles all the louder.

“Oh,” Shadow says. “Um.”

Vio’s shoulders duck a little. “I may have destroyed my phone last week. I haven’t gotten around to getting another one yet.” He sounds sheepish, and winces as he raises his arm to rub at the back of his neck.

“Oh,” Shadow says again. “Well-- is there any way I can contact you, then?” He hates the note of desperation in his voice, but--

But Vio is the first dragonrider he’s ever met.

But there’s so much he wants to ask, and so much he wants to know, and so much he wants to learn.

But he doesn’t want to be alone again.

Vio tugs at the collar of his shirt, looking a little uneasy. “You can always have your dragon contact mine, if need be. I have obligations that will take most of my time in the upcoming weeks, but--”

“Same,” says Shadow quickly. Maybe a bit too quickly. “What with school starting up and all--”

Maybe that was a bit too much information-- Vio’s eyes narrow the slightest bit, focusing on him just a degree more. “Right,” he murmurs. “You were in the bookstore as well-- were you buying things, or just looking for me?”

“Buying things,” Shadow lies through his teeth. “Meeting you was just a lucky side effect.”

And then he  _ winks _ .

After a moment of silence, he immediately wants to  _ die. _ Vio just looks at him with a furrow in his brow and then coughs, turning away. “Well,” he says, and then hesitates. “I suppose this is goodbye for now. I need to go clean my leg sooner rather than later.”

“Right, right. S-- uh, sorry about that.” Shadow rubs the back of his neck sheepishly as his fellow dragonrider ( _!!! _ ) hauls himself up onto his dragon’s neck with his forearms alone ( _!!!!! _ ). “See you later?”

“See you later,” Vio agrees, Priesm standing up not a half second later. Ie is so  _ delicate _ -looking up close, all gauze and twigs and wings and teeth. Noci could stomp on iem and squish iem flat ( _ ::No I could  _ **_not,_ ** _ hatchling, do not borrow trouble for us!:: _ ).

Then ie takes off with a gust of air, and Noci sighs loudly until Shadow hauls himself up onto her neck as well.

 

When Shadow strips down to his underwear in the bathroom that night, something on his face catches his eye.

Under his bangs, a few inches above his left eyebrow, a tiny cut leaves a tiny blood trail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at least 5.5k of this chapter has been written since like april last year, it's unfathomable that it took me this long but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> if you enjoy the drau pls come talk to me about it at my  tumblr! 


	6. Vio, Fall, 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which vio and shadow face the most daunting challenges of all: respectively, friends and emotions

Of course they attend the same high school.

Of _course_ they do, because Vio cannot catch a single break ever, not once, not in his entire life.

The duel with the rogue dragonrider, while fun, has caused the stitches up and down his ribs to split, meaning Vio has spent the last week and a half of his free time grounded and irritable. Not only has he lost out on almost a full month of flight, having to spend his rest time strengthening his mental shields (and sulking like a child, he is not too big to admit to throwing a moderate amount of mental temper tantrums), his shoulders have outgrown his shirts _again_ , meaning _another_ round of back-to-school shopping with his far-too-amused mother.

At this point, he’d dress in a canvas tarp if it left him enough room to move his arms and legs. He knows that it’s adolescence and his training, but frankly he is _quite tired_ of shopping.

(It’s the people. Even with his shields, the mental din from the amount of people crowding into the local shopping mall for the last bits of school shopping leaves him with a throbbing headache. As much as he tries, he is still not fully able to keep his shields up. Priesm says it’s because he’s sensitive. Vio thinks he must not be trying hard enough. He vows to do better.)

He is still stiff as he trots up the path towards the high school, his wound (stitches out, now covered with a gauze pad and a stupid amount of vetrap because tape Does Not Cut It) throbbing in time with his breaths. Priesm grumbles vague discontent in the back of his mind, but Vio has far too much energy to go a full day sitting down without at least a morning jog.

It’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough, and walking through the sea of students around him gradually ticks up from a nuisance to an ordeal to actively irritating, like five thorns buried underneath his sock at once. Everyone is loud and jubilant, greeting old friends, making new ones; there’s threads of dismay and resignation from almost everyone as well.

Another year of school, the air seems to say, heavy with sarcasm. Hooray.

As much as he avoided his old friends last year, he’s not expecting them to want anything to do with him. He doesn’t think he’s seen Red in half a year, hasn’t talked to Blue in longer than that. He and Green live somewhat in the same neighborhood; they’ve seen each other across the street now and then when Vio’s had to run to the store for something or other, but Vio has discouraged active conversation as much as he can.

So it’s all but a complete surprise when he turns from setting up the shelves in his new locker and finds all three of them caging him in, smiles on their faces and mischief in their eyes.

“Holy shit,” Blue blurts before anyone else can say anything. “When the hell did you get tall?”

“Watch your mouth!” Green scolds with an elbow to the ribs. He hits his target and Blue lists to the side with a grunt and a glare.

“I could say the same to you,” Vio says after a moment, looking at his friends with an appraising eye. They’ve all grown, though Red is still the shortest. He still retains some of the baby fat around his cheeks, making him look at least a year or two younger than he is. But his shoulders are solid, as is his stance. There’s a padded instrument case sitting by his feet; perhaps he joined the marching band.

Blue is still stocky and muscular, though his eyes are about an inch or two below Vio’s, a fact that he appears to be fuming over if the way he’s thrown his shoulders back is any indication. He’d always been the tallest of the four throughout elementary and middle school, so this can’t be a development that pleases him. His biceps stand defined when he reaches up to slap Vio on the shoulder. Vio thinks upon the unfairness of the world. He has been _fighting monsters_ for two years and he _still_ does not have that sort of definition.

Green, though—

“Have you cut your hair at last?” Vio says with a squint. Green has been notoriously bad about keeping his hair trimmed and neat for as long as he can remember, preferring to be long and shaggy like some sort of _beast_ —but now it’s short, no more than three inches or so, shaved along the sides and left to flop in the middle, like a horse mane. It fits him well enough, and Green’s pleased grin and duck of head make Vio sure that it was the right thing to mention. “It must make brushing easier.”

“That it does,” Green agrees with great cheer, and slings an arm around Vio’s shoulders. “How’ve you been, buddy? Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you!”

A pointed inquiry, but a gentle one. As much as he doesn’t like being used as a jungle gym, Vio _has_ missed his friends. “Well enough, I suppose,” he says with a shrug. Green moves with the motion, and Vio puffs out a sigh. “Don’t you all have homerooms to be getting to?”

“It’s still fifteen minutes till the bell, Vi, you’re not going to get rid of us _that_ easily,” Red says, hands on his hips. “Spill! What did you do this summer that made you so busy you couldn’t answer your phone?”

It’s a very valid question. He’d seen all their texts, had let their calls ring through to voicemail. To be fair, at some of the points they’d called he’d been busy with a sword in his fist, so, there was that, but for the rest…

“I dropped my phone in a stream early in the summer,” he says, and makes the requisite apologetic expression. “I just got around to getting a new one last week.”

“It _figures,_ ” Blue groans, punching him in the shoulder that Green isn’t hanging off of again. “You would do something like that, would you?”

“It made for a very peaceful summer,” Vio nods, and Red snorts.

“Well, you have one again now, right?” When Vio nods again, Red nods too, decisive. “Good. That means you can hang out with us again, right?”

“Please,” Green says, batting his eyes. “My grades, man. Without you I _suffered._ You’ve gotta help me.”

“You do,” Blue says, “he would not shut _up_ during any of our study sessions. Plus, if I wanna stay on the bench this year I gotta keep my grades up too.”

Vio squints at them both, and then at Red, who grins unrepentantly at him. “Mine are fine! But I still need someone to play cards with after my homework is done and those two are still being babies. I can only play solitaire for so long, Vi!” He leans close as if to confide something confidential, and whispers “It’s so _boring._ ”

“I hate algebra so much, you know?” Green groans. “Vio. Vio, please, save me. You’re the only one I know who can make something so dumb sound interesting, even if it’s still kinda dumb.”

“You do realize,” Vio says, a furrow in his brow, “that I am taking pre-calc this year, right?”

“So algebra should be a piece of cake?” Green says brightly, and Vio only realizes the trap he’s walked into once it’s sprung. “Excellent! Great! We meet in the study room by the library twice a week after school, usually Mondays and Wednesdays, unless Red has band or Blue has a handegg match.”

“It’s football, you—“ Blue growls, the second half of a well-worn inside joke, but before he can finish or Vio can protest the bell rings. “Aw, Din’s sake, I gotta get all the way across the building,” he groans, turning on his heel and walking away without pause. “Red, you too, you’ve got Morris this year, he’s on the second floor.”

Red whines, long and loud, and before Vio can act he’s darted in to hug him square around the waist. “We’ll text you,” he says into Vio’s chest, “and if you don’t answer I’m coming to your house and force-feeding you my latest cookie experiments!”

“Please, no,” Vio says in genuine horror. “Anything but that.”

“Then answer your phone!” Red’s grinning as he picks up his instrument and trots after Blue. It’s been a while since he’s seen that smile. Vio hadn’t known he missed it until now.

That just leaves Green, still slung off his shoulder, still lazily grinning. “And you?” Vio says, one eyebrow arched in a way that usually sets Green to sputtering. It still works. “Where are you headed?”

“Monroe, 1-13.” He points right across the hall. “Love not having to climb any stairs in the morning. Love it. Where are you off to?”

He double checks his schedule. “Looks like….Monroe.”

“Sweet!” Green hip-checks him away from the lockers and finally drops away. The halls are clearing now as other students file themselves away into their respective classrooms. The din outside his head has lessened considerably, making it so much easier to concentrate.

Which makes the sudden flare of _dragonrider aura_ so much easier to detect. His head snaps up without conscious thought, already trying to pinpoint the sensation. It’s so arrogantly _there_ it’s a wonder he hasn’t sensed it until now.

There. Right down the hallway.

Green says something, sounding a little concerned, but Vio doesn’t parse it. He’s sharpening his senses, feel-hear-tasting the air, and—

Oh.

The rogue dragonrider—Shadow?—the shadow-bonded, at least, comes strolling down the empty hallway, hands shoved into the pockets of his bulky jacket, eyes and face almost buried behind massive goggles and bulky scarf. He’s whistling as if he has no care in the world.

It wouldn’t be all that out of the ordinary if it wasn’t already eighty degrees and humid at the tail-end of August.

Vio knows full well why he’s dressed like he is. He can even see the beads and streaks of condensation trailing down the edges of the goggles before he shakes his head and lets his vision return to normal.

Their fight had told him a lot about the other dragonrider—that he was brash and impulsive and untrained, that he was stubborn and aggressive, that he either did not know when to back down from a fight or simply did not care to. What it had not done was tell Vio the other rider was stupid.

So _why_ on Farore’s good earth was he _acting_ like it?

It bothers him all throughout homeroom and first period; it’s not until the first lecture of his chemistry class that his shoulders lose some of their tension. To be absolutely fair, no one else at the school would be likely to know the significance of the heavy gear; they might just think him an eccentric, or perhaps someone who gets cold easily and has a sensitivity to light.

Perhaps they might just think him an idiot.

Either way, it is not his problem. All he has to do is keep his head down and his grades up, keep himself out of notice, make sure no one catches so much as a hint that Vio is not all that he appears to be.

Easier said than done.

 

~*~*~*~

 

 _::Again,::_ Noci says, forked tongue flickering out between her heavy jaws. _::Focus, hatchling.::_

“I _am,_ ” Shadow grunts, sweat beading on his brow as he stretches his hands out, trying and failing to grasp the thin wisps of shadows she drools from between her teeth. “It’s not _working._ ”

He hates this, he really does, but that spar with Vio taught him a lot; mostly, that Shadow sucks _ass_ at being a dragonbonded. All those fancy moves, all that fancy footwork, and all that stupid determination has left him feeling like a kindergartener shoved into a business convention and told to make his way from there.

Like it or not, he’s part of something bigger than him now. Like it or not, if he doesn’t wanna get treated like said kindergartener, he needs to start learning how to graduate.

Thus, sitting in the shadows of Noci’s den, he’s trying his best to pluck semisolid shadows and keep them cradled in his palms, something he is completely and utterly failing at.

It’s different when Noci helps him; he can feel her pressure in his head, almost acting through him. Most of his magic has been performed like this, if he's being honest; Noci telling him what buttons to press and providing the juice while he listens to her. It’s worked alright so far, but now that he’s expected to do things on his own, it’s rough.

He never asked to be a dragonrider. He never asked for magic and mayhem and _staying up all night while a shitty dragon drools shitty gross shit all over his hands._

 _::I heard that,::_ Noci grumbles, and butts her head into him so hard he falls backward onto the rough stone floor. _::Take a break. You are obviously too frustrated to continue.::_

“Uuuuuuuuugh,” Shadow groans, long and heartfelt. “This is so stupid.” She doesn’t dignify him with a response, turning to crunch a little more on her hoard. Somewhere behind her something big shifts and falls down the junk pile, landing with a worrisome noise. Shadow hopes it’s not the couch. That thing is comfy as heck.

Still groaning, he rolls over and drags himself to the front of the cave, where gentle moonlight makes a little illuminated area and he can look at the lake a couple thousand feet below. The slope between here and there is rocky, covered with scrub brushes and huge displaced boulders. It’s a peaceful view, and the longer he looks down the more he feels himself settle.

“Hey, Noci,” he says, not turning around. “Why do I suck so much at this?”

He hears her shift. There’s a rattle and a scrape, and then her head thumps down to rest beside him. It’s longer than his body; when he’s standing, it’s almost taller than he is, too. Her bright red eyes, closed for now, are bigger than his head. All of her teeth are thicker around than his thighs. Her fangs are thicker than his _body._

She’s the most apex of apex predators, the true ruler of this world, and right now she’s tilting her head so that he can scratch at the thinner scales along her eyeridges. It’s a little humbling. “Oi,” he says, trying to cover up the mushy feels. “I asked you a question.”

 _::Probably because you do not care,::_ Noci says with the mental equivalent of a shrug. _::To the left. No, up. Yes, there.::_

“What do you mean I don’t care?” He’s appalled and a little hurt. He’s been working his ass off all night to so much as catch a handful of mist. “I’m trying, alright?”

 _::Do not misunderstand me. You care, but you do not_ **_care._ ** _Your heart of hearts does not lie aside your goals. You hold yourself back even as you force yourself forward.::_ She says it casually, but it still makes Shadow pull back, wounded. Her eye rolls open the slightest bit, a crescent of crimson in the moonlight. _::You are emotional as any egg-fresh hatchling, little bonded. Therein lies your fault.::_

“So, I’m bad at magic because of my _feelings?_ ”

_::You are bad at this particular brand of magic because of your feelings. Mayhaps if I was Fire or Water your time would come easier, but we are of the Second, and things are never as straightforward with us.::_

“That’s a whole lot of words to mean jack shit.” She turns her head and huffs hard enough to send Shadow tumbling back again. “Hey!”

 _::Listen when I teach you, little idiot, lest I go find a less amenable yantras to drill this into your thick skull.::_ She closes her eye when Shadow crawls back over to karate-chop her eyebrow. _::You struggle because your mind’s eye and your heart’s heart pull you in two separate directions. We of the Shadowflight are at a disadvantage; inherently, our gift is turbulent. For dragonkith it is no issue; my magic runs through me like my blood. But for you, so much smaller, so fragile and soft...::_

Shadow grumbles and stands to grab a handful of her crest, hauling himself on top of her broad head. It’s flat enough that he can lay spread-eagled, so he does. “Yeah, yeah, little baby Hylian is a little crunchy baby morsel, I get it.”

 _::I will launch you towards the lake right now,::_ Noci threatens, the lowest basso rumble shaking through her body. Shadow doesn’t think she’d actually do it, but he scooches back to wrap an arm around one crest spike anyway. _::Will you be still and listen to me now?::_

“Never,” he mumbles.

_::Shall I pin you under my head until I am through?::_

“You’re like, the size of a car. You’d squish me flat. I’d become jelly.”

 _::Perhaps then you would be silent. It would be for the best, then.::_ Her great head starts tilting to the side, enough that Shadow’s legs slip and dangle off to the side. He chokes on a laugh and wraps all four limbs around her crest spike. _::Clingy little primate.::_

“Aright, alright, I promise I’ll listen, don’t squish me!” Shadow says, and slips down to curl into the hollow of her neck, bracing his feet on her nearest spine and closing his eyes. “Go on, then. Magic mumbo jumbo away.”

She waits until he’s comfortable again before she begins.

_::Heed me well, little bonded. Long stretches the history of dragonkind, back to the Three in the egg of the world. Three and then three and then three; thus was the world formed, and the dragonkith and kin, and every other living thing on the shell of the earth._

_::You know well that when Nayru formed us, She had been dwelling in Her depths, learning all the secrets of Her domain. So having explored, so having known, She desired to add something new to the world. And so She took the fire at the heart of the world, and her Sister Din’s unshakeable ferocity, and the secrets spun from starsong, and the dark from her depths, and from the shadows she pulled the first of us._

_::But even then, the one who waits was there._

_::He has always been there, since before the world-egg hatched, and will be here long after its shell is ground to dry dust. He waits, and he watches for His opportunity._

_::The starsong we are spun from is the only outside element that a dragonflight has been crafted from. Thus, we are strong in ways that others are not; thus, we are weak in ways that others are not. Of the three and the three, only we are most likely to hear His voice, to sing His songs._

_::He has exploited that weakness once before. It almost brought the whole of dragonkind to ruin._

_::You have already felt its effects, little hatchling. During your duel, you heard His song. You felt His voice, however faint, however far. He is drawn to all Bonded, for it is in the bonds that His key to entering this world lies. He feeds on negative influence; He sups on despair, on hatred, on discord, and uses them to press His cracks into the fabric of our world. You must take care with your emotions, hatchling; you feel so much, and that is not a bad thing, but you must be wary._

_::Part of you knows this; part of you resists, even now. To give yourself to the flow and thrum of the starsong is to immerse yourself in the domain of He Who Waits. Holding yourself back is the safest position to maintain, yes; but we are dragonkith, and safety holds only for so long._

_::Our hatchlings are taught to fall before they fly. You have already tasted the fall, bonded, have felt the effects of the landing. It unnerves you, does it not? The thought of reaching into the vast and gaping unknown, the thought of losing control. You will have to, sooner or later. None of the dragonkith can bear to live grounded._

_::Know this: I am here. I am with you always, and as long as I am with you, He cannot have you._

_::Now. Reach out and touch them.::_

Eyes still closed, he breathes in, and out, and reaches forward.

When he opens them again, his cupped hands are full of dense, wiggling shadows. They curl around his fingers, barely tangible, mostly amorphous. “Sick,” he mumbles, shaking his cupped hands side to side and watching them swirl like fog.

 _::Just like when you healed me after we bonded,::_ Noci says with no small amount of pride. _::Even then your emotions were high. It makes the shadows easier to access, yes, but more volatile. You must find your balance, or they will swallow you whole when you lose your focus.::_

Shadow most definitely loses his focus at that. “Wait, what?” He grabs for the shadows more tightly, but they ooze out around his fist and fizz out into nothingness. Noci makes a sound very much like a _tch_ (and how she can do that with her mouth Shadow doesn’t know or understand) and huffs beneath him. “No, none of that bullshit, what do you mean swallow me whole? Noci—“

 _::Later.::_ She lurches to her feet, making Shadow yelp and flip himself over to grab at her riding harness. _::I am tired of sitting while the moon is high. Let us go chase a loftwing or two; those birds have become complacent around my den.::_

“Hey, _no,_ loftwings are endangered, you can’t eat them—“ the rest of Shadow’s protest is swallowed in the sound of Noci’s wings shifting, like a thousand sheets of paper rubbing together. “Noci, I’m not even hooked on—“

_::You have three seconds.::_

“ **_Noci!!!_ ** ”

 

~*~*~*~

 

“—so then,” Blue continues, jabbing Vio in the shoulder with a pretzel rod and snapping him out of his semi-doze, “you know what the guy says?”

He’s lost track of the conversation entirely. One minute, he’d been scratching out equations absentmindedly, half of his attention on his math and the other half focusing on keeping his mental blockade solid, and the next—

Chaos.

There’s popato chisps all over the table. Someone’s dangerously uncapped bottle of soda is one good arm-flail away from falling down to froth all over the nice study-room carpet. Someone’s gathered up all the spare notepads and textbooks to make some sort of makeshift tabletop terrain, and Red is crafting tiny stick figures from the rest of the pretzel rods and some gumdrops. Green is helping, if by “helping” one means alternately mashing gumdrops into a hideous gumdrop monstrosity and eating said hideous gumdrop monstrosities.

“It is a wonder either of you still have your teeth,” Vio mutters under his breath.

“No, dumbass! He said, and I quote, _if they fell forward, they’d still be in the boat_!” Blue bursts out into cackles of laughter, slapping Vio on the shoulder hard enough to jolt him forward and break his concentration. His mental shield slips; he catches one massive blast of good-natured humor, of laughter and affection and genuine good vibes, and it fills him up with a fizzy warmth that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

He really has missed this. Not being a normal high schooler, but acting the part; sitting with his friends, doing his homework in company, foisting all of Red’s weird snacks off onto Blue or Green. It doesn’t help his concentration, but it raises his morale.

He takes a moment to bask in the feeling, and because of that he catches the pulse of _wrongness_ like an icy-handed slap across the face.

It’s so strong and sudden that the grin he didn’t realize he was making falls off his face fast enough to make his mouth hurt. It sends chills up his spine and nausea down his throat, knocks the air out of his lungs and leaves him reeling, grasping the edge of the table white-knuckled to keep his balance. It’s almost impossible to describe, but Vio’s mind reels for a description anyway, desperate to quantify something so off-putting.

Sharp. Slimy, with a bitter aftertaste. The scent of something long into decomposition, a bloated carcass left to rot in high summer. The auditory feeling of nails on a chalkboard. A strobe light with a thousand clashing colors compressed down into a single second, held three inches in front of his eyes. The building pressure of a thunderstorm, the sensation of static from a balloon held just above an arm.

A phantom sensory overload large enough to blank him almost completely out of himself.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first half of blue's joke is _why do scuba divers fall backwards out of boats?_
> 
> i thrive on your feedback ฅ'ω'ฅ

**Author's Note:**

> this story is a labor of love, and has been for over a year. if you enjoyed it at all, please leave a comment, or hit me up at [my tumblr](www.winged.obsessor.tumblr.com)


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